Gord Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Hello, I was doing some recording today, when Logic crashed. The crash screen came up, and I selected for logic to re-open. Logic told me it had auto saved my project before the crash, and asked me if I wanted to re-open that, which I did. Upon re-opening, around a dozen or more audio files were missing. I hit the search button for each missing file, but logic did not find any of them, and the project opened with blank audio where there previously had been audio. Are these audio tracks completely gone? I do have a backup on an external hard drive that should have them on it, but I’ve done some edits since then. I feel that I shouldn’t have to do that, and the files must be somewhere. What has happened to these audio files? Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Had you saved your project before the crash? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 Yes, I’d been saving. I’d actually only been working on in for 10 minutes or so before this happened, just trying to get a small thing done before I went to work. I think I recorded one small piece of scratch audio before this happened. I should be clear too, the audio that’s missing is not anything new I’d done. It’s audio that’s been in place for weeks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Then the audio files should be in the same place where they were before. I mean a Logic crash will not delete audio files from the Mac. Is the project saved as a package or folder? Did you look inside the project's Audio Files folder? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 That’s what I thought too. The project is saved as a project. Haha. That’s a silly sentence that makes complete sense in context. When I selected the search button to look for the missing audio manually, it would not let me go into the project, it was greyed out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 7 minutes ago, Gord said: The project is saved as a project. Haha. That’s a silly sentence that makes complete sense in context. When you save a project, you can choose to organize it as a folder, or as a package. Which one did you save your project as? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 Lol, sorry, I misread package as project, jeez I’m tired today. I believe it’s a package because it’s one single large file that I can’t expand. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Then you can control click the project in the Finder to go inside the package and see if you can find the audio files in the Audio Files folder (inside the Media folder)? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 I did this, and opened the project in Logic so it would give so it would tell me which files were missing. I went through them one by one. None of the missing files are in the audio files folder. They are missing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 22 Share Posted February 22 Did you rename the files at some point? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 22 Author Share Posted February 22 No. The files were there before the crash. Once reopened they were gone. From the time it crashed to the time I opened it back up was about one minute Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Solution Gord Posted February 23 Author Solution Share Posted February 23 So, the song that had this problem was a song that I had recently made a copy of so I could re arrange the structure of the song. I had finished it, and then I realized it might sound cool with a different structure to it, so I made a copy of the song and re arranged the copy. I didn't do much to the new arrangement in terms of recording, but a lot of structural changes. What I ended up doing was simply copying the missing audio files from the older song to the new song, just option dragging them to copy them in. There were 7 missing in total. I opened the re arranged version with the previously missing audio and it worked, back the way it was. However, I have no idea why Logic would delete seemingly random audio files from my project. I mean, Logic did crash, so something wasn't working properly, but during that 10 minute session before the crash, I hadn't even touched the files the were deleted. And come to think of it, this has happened to me once before with a different song, but only with one audio file. It was a scratch track, so it ultimately didn't matter, and I just thought it was kind of an odd thing. Anyways, thanks for the help David, you've helped me with a couple other things before, and I really appreciate it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 9 hours ago, Gord said: What I ended up doing was simply copying the missing audio files from the older song to the new song, just option dragging them to copy them in. There were 7 missing in total. I opened the re arranged version with the previously missing audio and it worked, back the way it was. Great, it's good to hear that you found a copy of your files and were able to resume your work! 🙂 Thanks for letting us know. I personally have never seen or heard of Logic deleting an audio file, even after a crash (I've had my fair share of Logic crashes as you can imagine). My personal workflow is to always save my projects organized as Folder, and always make 100% sure all audio files are saved inside the project folder, in their "Audio Files" folder. That has never failed me here. And always save your project first, before you start recording audio. That way even if later I make a few recordings without re-saving and Logic crashes before I had a chance to re-save, the audio files are still inside the "Audio Files" folder. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted February 25 Author Share Posted February 25 So you're not going to believe this, but it just happened again. Exact same thing. Worked on it for about 15 minutes, edited some drums, recorded a build, went to playback the whole thing before a bounce, crash. Reopened, same audio files missing. I mean, I can do the same fix, but something's got to be wrong here. I worked on a different project for about an hour before going to this one, and no issues with the other. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted February 25 Share Posted February 25 1 hour ago, Gord said: and no issues with the other. You might have project corruption. Open a new project and import all the data using the Project Import function on the All Files Browser on the right. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 3 Author Share Posted March 3 On 2/24/2023 at 6:51 PM, triplets said: You might have project corruption. Open a new project and import all the data using the Project Import function on the All Files Browser on the right. It took me awhile to try this as I was working on some other songs, but then I came back to this one. I tried doing this, and it seemed to have done the trick, but then it crashed again, this time during a bounce. I lost one audio file, one that, after other crashes, had been missing before. I'm copying it into the audio folder again, but although this was a good idea, it is still doing it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 How often do you save while working on a project? Do you let hours go by before you save? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 4 Author Share Posted March 4 14 hours ago, triplets said: How often do you save while working on a project? Do you let hours go by before you save? I save often. I wouldn’t say I’m a compulsive saver, but I use command s and save every few minutes. 15 to 20 tops depending on what I’m doing. This is not a saving issue, or more specifically, a lack of saving issue. If I lost audio due to my own forgetfulness of saving, and then losing that due to a crash, I would know what had happened, and it would be my own dumb fault. The times this has happened, I lose the same audio. It’s audio completely unrelated to what I’m working on during the session of the crash. Audio that is months old. This was the sequence of how it happened. I had this song that was mostly finished, but had an idea, and I had been working on re-structuring this song from a typical verse chorus verse chorus arrangement, to all the verses in the first half and all the choruses in the second half (it’s an instrumental, it makes sense, trust me lol), so I had been chopping and moving parts to see if this new arrangement idea would work. Before I started chopping up the song like a mad scientist, I saved another version of the song and renamed it so I could differentiate between the two versions. I chopped and changed the re named version and was working away. I’m just a hobbyist, so I work piecemeal here and there sometimes when I can. I had been making small changes and refining the arrangement and was making bounces of the song to listen to it later with fresh ears to see if what I had done worked. I was doing a small session after listening to a bounce, and adding a short build into the second half of the song. It was a session of maybe 20 minutes. Logic crashed, and I lost audio. The audio I lost was from the first half of the song that I hadn’t even touched that session, and the audio I HAD been working on was still there. If I hadn’t have been working on another version of the song, I wouldn’t have an “extra” project to take the audio I had lost from, that’s why I was able to re-find the audio tracks I’d lost. The next time it happened, it was the same type of thing, and I lost the same audio files that I had the first time. I think it was 8 files in total. I tried importing the project into a new project like you suggested, and it seemed to work for a couple small sessions. Although one of the bounces I made within this timeframe had one of the troublesome audio files missing from the bounce, even though it was in the project at the time of the bounce. The crash eventually happened again, but this time I only lost one audio file, but it was still one of the original 8 I had lost the other times. Every time totally unrelated to the parts of the song I’d been actually working on. I know that’s a lot of text to read, but I’m trying to specify what’s happening a little more. I went to an audio school about 20 years ago for two years and then got into another industry. So while I don’t know this program anymore, I do have a basic memory of principals, and I know that a program like Logic shouldn’t just delete audio from a project, which is why this is so baffling to me. I’m actually kind of worried, cause I really like the new arrangement and want to keep it. I’m planning on releasing a little ep when this is done, and I’m starting to worry about handing this song over to someone else to be mixed when it crashes all the time. Thanks for the suggestions so far, I appreciate the help so far 🙂 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 When you save a project, what do you choose in the dialog: Package or Folder? Do you include audio files? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 4 Author Share Posted March 4 I did whatever the default was. So it was a package. I don’t know what you mean by including the audio files. The audio files are in the package if that’s what you mean. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 I personally choose folder, that way I don't have to right-click on the package to see the contents. As long as audio files is checked in the dialog, the project is self-contained. Good idea to always check what the default is. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 2 hours ago, Gord said: I don’t know what you mean by including the audio files. This: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 5 Author Share Posted March 5 So if I deselect this, the audio files will be separate? Any ideas on my crashing losing audio situation? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 53 minutes ago, Gord said: So if I deselect this, the audio files will be separate? They will go to who knows where. That's why you want to check that option. 54 minutes ago, Gord said: Any ideas on my crashing losing audio situation? If it only happens on this project, then could be some sort of corruption going on in the project itself. Hard to pinpoint. If it starts happening on other projects, it can be something else. Where are you saving to? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 5 Author Share Posted March 5 Just saving to the default Logic folder in the Music folder. I backup to an external hard drive when I make large jumps in progress. 3 minutes ago, triplets said: They will go to who knows where. That's why you want to check that option. So I’m not sure if this was selected or not. Like I said, whatever was default. I do know where the audio files are if I expand the package, they’re in the media folder upon expanding the package. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 2 minutes ago, Gord said: Just saving to the default Logic folder in the Music folder. How much space left on the computer's HD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 5 Author Share Posted March 5 About 450GB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
triplets Posted March 5 Share Posted March 5 Plenty room there. So maybe try putting the project on an external HD to test the behavior. Could just be a messed up problem with the ingredients of that project. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gord Posted March 6 Author Share Posted March 6 Sure I’ll try that. This is probably a dumb question, but can I just leave the ssd on and run the project off of it? Is that how people normally run their projects? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Nahmani Posted March 6 Share Posted March 6 4 hours ago, Gord said: can I just leave the ssd on and run the project off of it? Is that how people normally run their projects? Yes, nothing wrong with that, that's a very common way to work. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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