Waveform 11 Free: Crashing and can't restore current edit file

[Spotto]

Hi Experts! Help!

I'm running Waveform Free 11.5 (July 2021) on a Windows PC (Win 10) (I5 16 gb ram) and have been a user of the DAW for a few years.

All working pretty well over the past year or so apart from a few small crashes but today the project I was working on crashed completely during a looping playback as I was editing. Maybe I over stretched the CPU as sometimes happens? The sound just jammed in a persistent vibrating mess and I got the usual red triangle warning window message about the engine having crashed. Waveform appeared to close but the sound persisted and seemingly the only way to stop the noise was via Windows Task Manager and to stop Waveform fully from there.

I then reopened the programme; the edit I was working on did open but came back empty - just a few empty virgin tracks, no instruments and notes at all. No trace of the work. I seems to have disappeared. So, I went back to the projects tab and searched for the project. The best I could find was an earlier edit (much earlier!) which I opened and it does play but it will mean a huge amount of re-editing to get that back to where I was on the latest one. So, I want to know how to recover the missing edit.

I've tried to open backups by clicking on them but nothing seems to happen (What should happen? Am I doing that right?). I've also found a temp file called "tmp_[Name of crashed tune]" with no suffix but I think this may be an earlier render to .flac or .wav as it is about 105Mb in size. I wonder if the file is somewhere around but just needs to be restored or made visible?

I don't want to start clicking and messing with files just yet in case it messes something up.

Any pointers and assistance gratefully accepted.

Many thanks in advance,

S

[UnionS8]

Try to locate the project folder and open some older backup file.

[Watchful]

Spotto said he did that, but lost all the work done in between backup and current version.

I recall there are ways to recover projects using a text file editor... worst case, I believe the process was emailing the .xml file to Tracktion support and they might be able to recover the entire project. This has, to my memory, been done quite a few times with various users over the years.

[jabe]

Spotto said he did that, but lost all the work done in between backup and current version.

I recall there are ways to recover projects using a text file editor... worst case, I believe the process was emailing the .xml file to Tracktion support and they might be able to recover the entire project. This has, to my memory, been done quite a few times with various users over the years.

Sometimes the edit file gets corrupted. Such files are in XML format, although there may be more recent changes, not certain. However, it opening the file in a text editor won't do any harm, but saving it might if it's not entirely XML format.

XML is similar to HTML in that it contains data with descriptions of what the data is. There are two ways the data is encoded:

1. The usual way is to have what is called an opening tag that looks like this:
<dataTypeName>
and that's followed by some data and ended with a closing tag, which looks like this:
</dataTypeName>
Data like this always has to have an opening and closing tag, and there might be other data contained within that also has opening and closing tags.

2. Some data is coded entirely within on tag, like this:
<dataTypeName2 parameter=whatever parameter2="other stuff" parameter3=42 etc />
so that the tag is complete by the /> at the end instead of separate closing tag.
There might be other tags enclosed.

A vital thing with these tags is that they can be nested like this:
<animaltype type="mammal">
<subtype type="dog">
<specificbrand brand="poodle"
<barks="yes"/>
</specificbrand>
</subtype>
</animal>
Usually it makes sense in the way that the tags are nested in some sort hierarchy.

When these files get corrupted, it's not unusual for later balancing tags to be lost. In this case, data is lost, and the best you can hope to do is balance any unbalanced tags, so that Waveform will recognise it all properly and be able to open the edit file, allowing you to rebuild missing data, perhaps from audio files still within the project folder.

There is a website called w3c that contains tutorials about XML and many other internet coding protocols. I believe it also contains an XML checked that will highlight mistakes made in rebalancing corrupted data.

MIDI was often encoded within the edit file of ones I looked at. I would expect separate MIDI files to be accommodated too, via a file reference.

I'm afraid that in a few cases, people send me files that I didn't get far with sorting out. I apologise to anyone that I didn't get back to.

If any of the devs see this, I'd be interested in hearing whether the edit files are still entirely XML and editable in any text editors.

If you do try to cure a file in this manner, please do save a copy of the original in case you go wrong or need to start again.

It is possible that all the data might be lost from a file.

If anyone posts XML on here from such a file, I'm happy to help with advice on remedying problems with the code.

[Watchful]

Jabe, sorry--I couldn't remember who used to do this for people, and indeed it was you. It's a highly valuable service--I sincerely appreciate your jumping in to once again offer to assist, and I hope the OP takes you up on your generosity. I've lost lots of work over the years due to hardware crashes and failures, and know the agony of losing even one project.

[KyanGuitar]

Having the same issue, did you resolve it?

[jabe]

Having the same issue, did you resolve it?

Take a look at this thread: viewtopic.php?t=516981

See if the parts about the .tracktionedit or .trkedit files being corrupted are relevant to your problem. Start by opening those files in a web browser to check whether the final line says </EDIT>, as it should. If it doesn't, your file has become corrupted. It may be possible to retain some of your work by closing unbalanced XML tags. I'd expect audio files to still be in your project folder and any no longer referenced by a "fixed" edit file would have to be added manually.