I have had several cases of corrupt project files in various Tracktion projects recently.
The recorded .wav files are still in the directory and so is the Tracktion project file, but it either will not open, or will open an empty project when you try and open.
It happened to me in the middle of a CD project last month and I wrote it off to bad luck. I had to redo everything, editing mixing, processing.
Painful in the extreme.
I didn't know what to think, but now it has happened again on five other projects.
I have a new Caviar drive and all my plugins are present and accounted for. I have a UPS and I have not experienced crashes. Operating system is Win 7 Pro
What could be causing this and is there anything that can be done to fix such cases?
For the first time I am a little leery of Tracktion.
Corrupted Project Files Tracktion 6
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- KVRist
- 96 posts since 22 Jan, 2009 from California
Sworkshop
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906
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- KVRAF
- 2461 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
One of our other users had a similar problem earlier this year with a problematic .tracktionedit file. I know that the format of the data in these files is standard XML and I know how to edit these files so that internal concistency is maintained. In this particular instance, the problem file was emailed to me and I opened it (within Windows 10) using NotePad. From an XML point of view, everything within it was fine. I had been intending to perhaps remove a track that might have been causing the problem, with a view to returning several differently edited versions for the user to try so that he could see which, if any, worked when he replaced the problem version within the project folder.
Now then, I have no idea what changed, but I was able to open up the file he sent me without any problem, and when I sent it back, there was no longer any problem with it and he was able to open up his project perfectly.
I suggest you try to open the .tracktionedit files with NotePad (or other text editor if you're on Mac/Linux). If they open successfully, then save the file with a .txt suffix as backup and try saving it again under the original name. If the text editor won't save the file, just add and delete a character somewhere so that the editor thinks the file has changed.
If this makes no difference, I'll give you my email address, and you can send them to me, and I'll see if I can do anthing to help.
Now then, I have no idea what changed, but I was able to open up the file he sent me without any problem, and when I sent it back, there was no longer any problem with it and he was able to open up his project perfectly.
I suggest you try to open the .tracktionedit files with NotePad (or other text editor if you're on Mac/Linux). If they open successfully, then save the file with a .txt suffix as backup and try saving it again under the original name. If the text editor won't save the file, just add and delete a character somewhere so that the editor thinks the file has changed.
If this makes no difference, I'll give you my email address, and you can send them to me, and I'll see if I can do anthing to help.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 96 posts since 22 Jan, 2009 from California
Thank you for the tip. I will give that a try!
Sworkshop
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906
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- KVRer
- 1 posts since 4 Dec, 2017
I really dont know what happened but I suspect that my computer updated and caused some of my registries to become corrupt. I fixed the problem however something has caused one of my Tracktion edits not being able to open. I tried the steps that were recommend but didnt have much success could someone please help me with this?
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- KVRAF
- 2461 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
I'll PM you my email address. Send me the file and I'll see if I can open it this end or edit it.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRAF
- 2461 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
I've edited the file, opened the edited version in T6, and emailed it to you. There's some loss, but hopefully it's not as disastrous as a complete loss.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRAF
- 2461 posts since 9 Oct, 2008 from UK
For those interested that classify themselves as knowledgeable or as willing tinkerers:
Reggie's corrupted file arrived as a 1.3MB attachment. I first opened it in NotePad and saw that the XML was incomplete. The data, as far as it went, ended after a number of MIDI notes within a track. I compared XML tags within the damaged track with those in a complete track, and added a closing </MIDISEQUENCE> tag, default QUANTISATION and GROOVE pairs copied from another track, a closing </CLIP> tag, and then closing </TRACK> and </EDIT> tags to complete the XML. Then I saved the file.
I was able to open the file in T6. When doing this kind of thing, because I had none of the MIDI and audio clips, and my plug-ins are different, there were lots of warning symbols. This was of no consequence since the file actually opened in T6, which was the primary aim of the exercise.
The saved version of the file was only around 1.0MB, about 25% smaller than it should have been. I saved the file once more from the email attachment and opened it with a hex editor. From the point where data had ended when I opened it with Notepad, the rest of the file consisted only of x'00' characters (which Cobol users used to call "low values").
Unfortunately, the missing 300kB should have contained further tracks containing audio. The audio clips for these should still be in the project files, but all related data had gone from the .tracktionedit file. In such cases, the owner is faced with either reconstructing lost tracks from clips left in the project folder, or with re-recording those tracks.
If anyone else has corruption problems, I'm prepared to see what I can do. I am considering creating a program that can reconstruct .tracktionedit files, but it might be more complicated than doing it by eye.
Reggie's corrupted file arrived as a 1.3MB attachment. I first opened it in NotePad and saw that the XML was incomplete. The data, as far as it went, ended after a number of MIDI notes within a track. I compared XML tags within the damaged track with those in a complete track, and added a closing </MIDISEQUENCE> tag, default QUANTISATION and GROOVE pairs copied from another track, a closing </CLIP> tag, and then closing </TRACK> and </EDIT> tags to complete the XML. Then I saved the file.
I was able to open the file in T6. When doing this kind of thing, because I had none of the MIDI and audio clips, and my plug-ins are different, there were lots of warning symbols. This was of no consequence since the file actually opened in T6, which was the primary aim of the exercise.
The saved version of the file was only around 1.0MB, about 25% smaller than it should have been. I saved the file once more from the email attachment and opened it with a hex editor. From the point where data had ended when I opened it with Notepad, the rest of the file consisted only of x'00' characters (which Cobol users used to call "low values").
Unfortunately, the missing 300kB should have contained further tracks containing audio. The audio clips for these should still be in the project files, but all related data had gone from the .tracktionedit file. In such cases, the owner is faced with either reconstructing lost tracks from clips left in the project folder, or with re-recording those tracks.
If anyone else has corruption problems, I'm prepared to see what I can do. I am considering creating a program that can reconstruct .tracktionedit files, but it might be more complicated than doing it by eye.
[W10-64, T5/6/7/W8/9/10/11/12/13, 32(to W8)&64 all, Spike],[W7-32, T5/6/7/W8, Gina16] everything underused.
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 96 posts since 22 Jan, 2009 from California
Wow a recovery program would be great. I've had this problem more than once.
Sworkshop
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906
"The tide of amateurism cannot but recede, until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant." - John Philip Sousa, 1906