Birdsound Editing Question

[tony_p]

Hi,

As an ocassional lurker to this forum I wondered if anybody can answer a query I have with the Audacity Editing software package. I have asked within their own forum but have not really got to the bottom of my problem yet, see below for my question.

Hi,

I've been using Audacity for several months now to download my minidisk recordings, however just recently I've been having problems with the above function. After having downloaded my recording through my normal method of line in connection to the MD, I can normalize the file in just over 1 minute, however this process now takes 8-10 minutes and also sometimes even crashes. What would be causing this sudden increase in the length of time to normalize thess files. Incidentally each file is transferred in the same format and are all of similar size.

Any thoughts?

Tony



The whole thread thus far can be seen at the following link.

http://audacityteam.org:80/forum/post/11630



Any ideas anyone as I am now thinking of taking the pc to a repair shop.

Regards

Tony

[lachlustre]

I think that you're in the right hands in the Audacity forum, but fwiw:
1) Audacity is hard-disk intensive: if you have little disk space, and it is horribly fragmented, then that won't help at all.
2) An 8-times slow-down is pretty brutal, nevertheless.
3) I have been working on 45-minute long mono recordings (old cassette tapes digitized), and I sometimes experience random crashes of Audacity (I'm on a mac, and it's difficult to bring down the whole OS nowadays). The most recent version seemed to be an improvement, if I remember correctly. I'm not using the normalization filter, though.

[tony_p]

Hi Lachlustre,

Good to hear from you again, I have defragged all my 3 drives now and if you see below, I have once again posted to the Audacity forum, have you any thoughts on the below.

Hi,

I'm at my wits end with this now, so here's the rundown and prepare yourself for some figures.

The whole time period of my aforementioned downloads use to take just over 1 1/2 hours from the initial download right through to my burned result. This whole process now takes up to or sometimes over 2 1/2 hours. Download 80 minutes, Normalizing 10-15 minutes, cutting and pasting 10 minutes and exporting 5 minutes then the burn at normal speed. This suggest to me that either the Audacity 1.2.6 version that I have has a fault somehow or more likely my cpu/memory allocation is incorrect. I only have one program (Audacity) running at the time of editing except virus checkers etc. According to XP's Task Manager, the figures shown below show what is going on with my pc at this time.

Physical Memory 1046956 KB
Available Memory 648000 KB which jumps up 6000 when idle
System Cache 757000 KB

Kernel Memory 75000 KB
Paged 54750 KB
Non Paged 20250KB

My PF Usuage generally 278 MB and sometimes peaks at 290MB during cut n paste process. 275MB when idle

Can I in any way manually change my amounts of memory usuage available for this program.

With regards to my temporary I cannot locat them anywhere and Drive space certainly does not appear to be an issue. Most other tasks undertaken on my pc do seem to operate normally.

Any further thoughts anyone.

Cheers

Tony

[lachlustre]

Hi,
I'm really not an expert at Windows anymore, so I can't help very much, but: the Task Manager figures are to do with RAM rather than disk space, aren't they? If I have it right Audacity slices up the sound into manageable chunks; stores them in temporary files on the hard disk, then loads them up into RAM when needed. Increasing the "amount of memory useage available for this program" would therefore mean increasing the number of these chunks loaded at a time, so a larger amount of sound gets loaded up from the disk in one go. I don't know how much RAM you have, but you would need an *awful* lot for this to make up for the problems you are having.

I have read the Audacity forum post. You mention that you have your hard disk partitioned into three drives. You also say that two of them have plenty of space (>>10GB), while the other (c) has 5 GB. This might well be your problem. If I remember correctly, c is the drive where programs are installed, including the Windows operating system itself and Audacity. Say you are working on a 1GB file in Audacity. The program chops it up into small parts and stores it in the tmp directory on the c drive. That takes up at least 1 GB of the 5GB available, but probably significantly more because the programmers may have coded it in a slightly less efficient way to speed up reading the files. Now, Windows is probably also using c to store its own temporary files, and swap memory. That also takes a chunk of the available hard disk space; from what I know of Windows, a much larger chunk than you would think! You are probably not left with very much at all, and this could significantly slow down file io because defragmentation never works as well as advertised.
Let's assume my hypothesis is correct. It may well not be, but anyway:
What's caused the change on your system? Either you have installed more programs or files on your c-drive that have filled it up beyone the threshold where there is competition for space, or perhaps an update of Windows has done this for you.
What is the solution? Two spring to mind:
1) Repartition your system. You have more than enough space on your other drives, move some to the c-drive. You will have to consult a windows person on how to do this, I'm afraid, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
2) Change the location of the directory in which Audacity stores its temporary files onto one of your more empty drives. On my Mac version of Audacity, if I open up the "Preferences" Menu, there is a tab at the top that says "Directories". This gives the location of the temporary file folder. You should be able to set this to somewhere else (e.g. your E-drive). I would note down somewhere the original location of the tmp directory in case you want to return it to its default position.

If it were my computer I would try 2 first to see if it solved my problem. If it did, then I would seriously consider 1 as a neater long term problem.

[tony_p]

Lachlustre scritto:

What is the solution? Two spring to mind:
1) Repartition your system. You have more than enough space on your other drives, move some to the c-drive. You will have to consult a windows person on how to do this, I'm afraid, but it shouldn't be too difficult.
2) Change the location of the directory in which Audacity stores its temporary files onto one of your more empty drives. On my Mac version of Audacity, if I open up the "Preferences" Menu, there is a tab at the top that says "Directories". This gives the location of the temporary file folder. You should be able to set this to somewhere else (e.g. your E-drive). I would note down somewhere the original location of the tmp directory in case you want to return it to its default position.

I had already changed the location of Audacity to my E:/ drive but I really am not able to see any of the temporary files created by Audavity. I am thinking of moving some of the other program files to the E:/ drive as well. I will possibly clear up the bunlk of my previous downloads off my E:/ drive as they are not needed and have been backed up to an external drive also.

I had also already changed my Directories section within Audacity to the E:/ drive as this was originally the C:/ drive.

I sounds like I'm rambling on but I will have another fiddle as suggested, incidentally I've since seen a thread on the Audacity forum about some copies hanging so it sounds like I'm not alone.

Thanks for your help and I'll see what I can do about a clearout in the meantime.

Cheers

Tony

[tony_p]

Hi,

I just thought I had better post an update on my progress and thanks to all those that have helped me.

TBH I don't know how I have got to where I am, I did have a clearout and tidy up of my main drive. I have also updated my virus/adware programs and things are much quicker now. Basically Audacity is currently back to it's previous expected state, i.e. much speedier at all tasks (normalizing/exporting etc.) than has recently been the case.

Thanks again everyone.

Tony