In this post I tell you how to recover an Audacity project from the data files when all feels lost.
Quick introduction. Audacity is a free, open source audio recording program. It works well and has useful features. The way it works, similar to other software, is while recording it saves a file every 6 seconds to keep from generating a giant audio file in memory. These are .au files.
Then, the program saves a .aup file which is essentially a playlist for the software to know which order to replay those files. There is a little more but that’s the basic idea.
If, for some reason, the .aup file fails to save you will feel despondent and helpless. Especially if you recorded an hour and a half interview that now appears to be completely lost. A search online for help in solving your problem will not leave you feeling better, unless you came here first.
For some reason, Audacity does not save the .au files with sequential filenames, they are random. This is a problem if you need to put them back in order. Note to developers, please change this.
For this solution I am using Audacity 2.1.xx. Navigate to the folder location for the project. Inside you should find a series of numbered folders each with approximately 256 .au files. Starting with the first sub-folder, follow these steps.
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- Sort the folder by date created
- Rename so that files are sequentially named, either with bulk rename and brute force or with PowerShell or similar bulk renaming tool.
- In Audacity File–>Import–>Audio–> Select all the files (Do this in batches, limit to under 1000, preferable the 256 that Audacity separates folders into)
- Wait while it churns
- Ctrl+A to select all the tracks
- Tracks–>Align Tracks–>Align End to End
- Ctrl+A to select all the tracks
- Tracks–>Mix–>Mix and render
- Wait while it churns
- Export WAV or MP3 (name this after it’s folder so you know what order they go in)
- Repeat for each sub-folder
Combine these into a new file with the same Align/Mix actions as before and export as your filetype of choice.
I hope that this has helped even just one person. Have a great day!