While I was working in Ardour 6.7 on Windows 10, my computer ran out of battery (my mistake). After I powered up and rebooted my computer, I tried to reopen the session and it does not even open up. Technically if I open another session and try to open the xml file I named the session, I get a page of error messages:
Session “C:\Users\standard\Desktop\Ardour\SPN\SPN - Episode 2 (snapshot SPN - Episode 2)” did not load successfully:
Failed to load state
—ERROR: Could not understand session file C:\Users\standard\Desktop\Ardour\SPN\SPN - Episode 2\SPN - Episode 2.ardour
ERROR: XML error: Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Document is empty in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Document is empty in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
Is there another way I can open earlier backup edits of my session in Ardour, and how do I do that? Let me know if sharing the session folder would be helpful.
I renamed the track which changes the ardour.bak into an Ardour Session file. I can tell it was the back up file as the file size was the same before I changed the name. But even as I try to open it, all that happens is the “Session setup” windows pops up. I attempted to open via “Other Sessions” option which does nothing. Finally opened a different session and open that file via Session → Open, and I got the same loading error message:
Session “C:\Users\standard\Desktop\Ardour\SPN\SPN - Episode 2 (snapshot SPN - Episode 2)” did not load successfully:
Failed to load state
—ERROR: Could not understand session file C:\Users\standard\Desktop\Ardour\SPN\SPN - Episode 2\SPN - Episode 2.ardour
ERROR: XML error: Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Document is empty in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Document is empty in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
ERROR: XML error: Start tag expected, ‘<’ not found in file:/C:/Users/standard/Desktop/Ardour/SPN/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.1/SPN%20-%20Episode%202.ardour at line 1:1
The best way forward may be to grab the audio and midi files (hopefully they’re still present in the “interchange” folder of the session – here C:\Users\standard\Desktop\Ardour\SPN\SPN - Episode 2\interchange\) and arrange them in a new session.
I’m not an expert with windows, perhaps there is a way to recover the files. There are various search hits when searching for “windows recover files are power outage”.
Yes, the raw audio files are in the interchange folder. I have all the original audio files so I guess I have to start from scratch again but at least I have them. Luckily I was only editing one long audio file for a podcast.
Would it be beneficial to me if I edit the audio with Ardour in Linux in terms of support from the Ardour community for issues like this? I know Windows is a whole different ball game. I strongly appreciate Ardour being cross platform. I only edited it in W10 since I use iZotope RX/Ozone for noise reduction and mastering. I dual boot so transitioning is easy.
