Audacity files too large

[arrows78]

Can anyone help with an issue we have discovered.

 

We are using Audacity 1.3.13 beta, but have discovered through testing that this is also true of Audacity 1.2.6.

 

Our students are trying to produce radio ads of approx 30s, with some self recorded audio files and some pre-recorded ones.

 

They have been getting error messages when they try to save their audacity files saying their disk is full. They all have 500MB quotas and most are well under this.

 

During testing we have discovered that if a large audio file is imported into Audacity, even if only a small segment is used from and the rest disgarded, on the initial save audacity saves the entire original file into the project folder. This means that if several large media files are imported and small sections used there needs to be enough space in a students area to be able to save all the media files in their entirity. Potentially several 100MB. We have seen initial saves of 400MB+.

 

When Audacity is closed it removes any unwanted sections of file bringing the project folder down to a few 10s of MB, which is more managable. The problem is to get to this managable size an initial save needs to have been made.

 

Does anyone out there know how to ensure students can save without having to give them a ridiculous file quota to over come the intial save issue?

[joe90bass]

We've had the same issue here - You could check the history view, it's in menu > history, iirc Audacity holds all imported files there even if not used until such time as they are discarded

[arrows78]

I saw that, but if I delete the files from the history will it cause a problem trying to save the project containing snippets of the file I have just deleted?

[bossman]

@arrows78:

 

We had the same problem here its a glitch within the software so the workaround is to grant those students who use the program unlimited disk space.

 

Its the only way we have found that will deal with this problem.

[Arthur]

Would OcenAudio be able to do what you need? It's very similar to Audacity.

[nickjelly]

Don't have audacity open but you need to save your work as a compressed project file. This option is available from one of the menus and came in with 1.3.x

We were equally frustrated with audacity's bloated saves and were about to drop using it until we found this feature.