Audacity Tip of the Day – How Not to Lose Data!
One issue when editing audio, is copy and pasting a section of a track from one open Audacity project to another. To save space audacity does not copy the underlying track completely to the new project, rather it links to it. This means that your second project (the one you are pasting into) is not completely self-contained as it depends on external files. This can be a quickfire way for the unsuspecting podcaster to lose a whole bunch of data (yes, me!). This problem is particularly nasty as you don't realise something has gone wrong until you close and reopen the project - finding that a long stretch of audio containing your beautiful voice is missing. To avoid this, adhere to the following workflow when copy and pasting from one project to another.
* In the first project, select and copy the audio you wish to duplicate
* Paste the audio into the second project
* In the File menu of the second project, click 'Check Dependencies'
* Click 'Copy All Audio into Project (Safer)'
* Just to stress the previous point, you really do want to use the Safer of the two copying options. I've found that using the other option results in some of the audio I wanted to copy being truncated
* Save the project
By following this workflow you should hopefully avoid seeing what I call the 'dreaded blue flat-line of death' where, on reopening of a project, you find that the middle of a track has been lost. If you adhere to these instructions you should also be able to select 'Delete orphaned files' when it appears from time to time while reopening an Audacity project. However, due to the frustrating and sensitive nature of audio loss issues, I accept no responsibility for anything that goes wrong! Best of luck and happy editing!
February 3rd, 2011 - 00:04
Yeah, watch out that you keep your files you put in Audacity wherever you left them if you want to save space by depending on them. If you do have the flat-line of death, you could have either:
1: Moved the depended file to another directory since placing it in Audacity.
2: Renamed any part of the directory the file was using since the placing.
3: Renamed the audio file itself since placing it in Audacity.
4: Edited the file too much. (you can’t use something to save over itself)
5: Deleted the file.
If any of these are the case, you could either take back all the new names and restore them to their original, THEN copy the files in Audacity, or you can open up the Audacity “.aup” file with a text editor like SciTE, find a directory or all the directories that have since changed and edit them to whatever the new ones is. (Using a ‘Find and Replace’ function if it’s a big project) If you deleted the file, there’s always a chance that it’s in the Trash or Recycle Bin. If not, then that’s about the end of the file, I’m afraid.