Proposal: Earlier Disk Over-run Warnings

Proposal pages help us get from feature requests into actual plans. This page is a proposal to increase Audacity;s resistance to situation where disk over-run causes problems

Proposal pages are used on an ongoing basis by the Audacity development team and are open to edits from visitors to the wiki. They are a good way to get community feedback on a proposal.

• Note: Proposals for Google Summer of Code projects are significantly different in structure, are submitted via Google's web app and may or may not have a corresponding proposal page.

The Problem

Bug #437 relates to this issue and is where it was originally reported.

1. Particularly egregious are the Recording functions as when the user runs out of disk space Audacity currently carries on recording but blithely overwrite earlir parts of the recorde project, effectively trashing the user's recording. Worse still the user has no idea that this has taken place until thay come to access the recording after "completion".
2. The Generate and Effect plug-ins are capable of generating large amounts of audio data with the potential for disk overrun, this is not handled cleanly.
3. Import can easily be asked to import a data set that is too large for the available disk space.
4. Export, particulary of uncompressed file formats but not restricted to them, can generate large amounts of audio data with the potential for disk overrun.
5. Even seemingly innocuous commands have the potential to produce sufficient data to overfill the disk.

1 above has given us unwanted bad press on the Wikipedia Audacity page "Limitations" section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audacity_%28audio_editor%29#Limitations

Proposed Feature

A suitable headroom buffer to be defined. This should be user-settable but deep in Preferences and with a sensible default of 50-100MB say.

• For Recording activities:
  1. Check before recording starts that there is more space available than the headroom buffer
  2. While recording takes place check the availble disk space
  3. If and when ir reaches the headroom buffer size: Audacity stops with an error message

• Generators and effects
  1. Check before the plug-in starts that there is more space available than the headroom buffer
  2. check that the volume of data, based on current settings, will not overfill the disk capacity minus the headroom buffer
  3. If we want to be really secure we would need to check as the plug-in progresses that we are not exceeding the headroom (in case the estimate was inaccurate) and if so stop the plug-in gracefully with an error message.

• Import
  1. check that the volume of data, based on current settings and imported filetype, will not overfill the disk capacity minus the headroom buffer
  2. if so disallow the import with an error message

• Export
  1. check that the volume of data to be drated, based on current settings and exported filetype, will not overfill the disk capacity minus the headroom buffer
  2. if so disallow the emport with a suitable error message

Developer/QA Backing

• Peter

Use Cases

TBP

Tables for analysis and subsequent tracking

File Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
New	TBP	???		no	no	no
Open	depends on data size and settings	almost certainly		no	no	no
Close	TBP	???		no	no	no
Save Project	TBP	???		no	no	no
Save Compressed Copy of Project Project	TBP	almost certainly		no	no	no
Check Dependencies	TBP	???		no	no	no
Edit Metadata Tags	TBP	???		no	no	no
Import	depends on file size & type	almost certainly		no	no	no
Export (various)	file size calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Apply Chain	TRICKY	almost certainly		no	no	no
Edit Chains	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Page Setup	TBP	???		no	no	no
Print	TBP	???		no	no	no

Edit Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Cut	TBP	???		no	no	no
Delete	TBP	???		no	no	no
Copy	calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Paste	calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Duplicate	calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Labelled Audio>Copy	calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no

Transport Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Record	open-ended	yes	Mark Young	ongoing	no	no
Timer Record	open-ended	yes	Mark Young	ongoing	no	no
Append Record	open-ended	yes	Mark Young	ongoing	no	no

Tracks Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Stereo Track to Mono	probably calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Mix and Render	probably calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Mix and Render to new Track	probably calculable	almost certainly		no	no	no
Resample	probably calculable	probably		no	no	no

Generate Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Chirp	calculable	yes		no	no	no
DTMF Tone	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Noise	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Silence	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Tone	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Click Track	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Pluck	calculable	yes		no	no	no
Risset Drum	calculable	yes		no	no	no

Effect Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Amplify	100%	yes		no	no	no
Auto Duck	TBP	yes		no	no	no
Bass & Treble	107% - used more while working	yes		no	no	no
Change Pitch	100%	yes		no	no	no
Change Speed	varies with % change	yes		no	no	no
Change Tempo	varies with % change	yes		no	no	no
Click Removal	varies	yes		no	no	no
Compressor	100%	yes		no	no	no
Echo	100%	yes		no	no	no
Equalization	100%	yes		no	no	no
Fade In	100%	yes		no	no	no
Fade Out	100%	yes		no	no	no
Invert	100%	yes		no	no	no
Leveller	100%	yes		no	no	no
Noise Reduction	100%	yes		no	no	no
Normalize	100%	yes		no	no	no
Nyquist Prompt	???	???		no	no	no
Paulstretch	massive	yes		no	no	no
Phaser	100%	yes		no	no	no
Repair	TBP	unlikely		no	no	no
Repeat	0%	almost certainly		no	no	no
Reverb	100%	yes		no	no	no
Reverse	100%	probably		no	no	no
Sliding Time Scale/Pitch Shift	100%	yes		no	no	no
Truncate Silence	varies by amount of silence	possibly		no	no	no
Wahwah	100%	yes		no	no	no

Effect Menu below the line

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Adjustable Fade	100%	probably		no	no	no
Clip Fix	100%	yes		no	no	no
Crossfade Clips	adds length of fade	probably		no	no	no
Crossfade Tracks	adds length of fade	probably		no	no	no
Delay	100%	yes		no	no	no
High Pass Filter	100%	yes		no	no	no
Limiter	100%	yes		no	no	no
Low Pass Filter	100%	yes		no	no	no
Notch Filter	100%	yes		no	no	no
SC4	100%	yes		no	no	no
Spectral edit multi tool	100%	probably		no	no	no
Spectral edit parametric EQ	95%	probably		no	no	no
Spectral edit shelves	100%	probably		no	no	no
Studio Fade Out	100%	probably		no	no	no
Tremolo	100%	yes		no	no	no
Vocal Reduction and Isolation	100%	yes		no	no	no
Vocal Remover	50%	yes		no	no	no
Vocoder	50%	yes		no	no	no

Analyze Menu

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Contrast	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Plot Spectrum	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Find Clipping	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Beat Finder	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Regular Interval Labels	TBP	almost certainly		no	no	no
Sample Data Export	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Silence Finder	TBP	probably		no	no	no
Sound Finder	TBP	probably		no	no	no

Generate/Effect/Analyze Menus

Command	% extra	Needs trapping	Assigned to	Fixed	Tested	Resolved
Add / Remove Plug-ins	varies	almost certainly		no	no	no

Details

TBP

GUI Examples

TBP

Previous Feature Requests relating to this proposal

TBP