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Audio Recording missing over half the audio, possibly corrupt, unsure what to do.
I have what should be just over 5 hours of recording, using Recordpad to make a 48000hz 32 Bit Stereo Uncompressed PCM Wave File, we’ve practiced with these settings before and they were fine.
When I play the file, barely just over 2 hours is available for some reason, although comparing filesizes to previous recordings, there should definitely be 5 hours in it.
I have another recording that works fine with these settings, it’s about 2 hours 20 minutes and it’s 2.7 gigs. My 5 hour recording that is only showing 2 hours ish is nearly 7 gigs in size.
Both instances it’s just a commentary track.. I’m going out of my mind here, I can’t lose this audio.
Is there anything I can do?
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6 Replies
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You might be running up against the old 4gig file size limit.
Basically many legacy computer operating systems limit the size of a file that it can either create or read. It goes back to older Windows systems and relates to the size of partitions on a FAT16 formatted volume. While technically, file sizes can be much bigger, it’s best to keep to this simple rule:
Never create a WAV file bigger than 4Gig
If you can find a program that will open it, and that can split it into smaller chunks, that might work. Or if your original recording device can still play it back, then you may have to play the file out of that device in real time to another recorder, and split the file manually
Michael Paul
Location Sound Corp -
Oh no, it’s definitely not that. My HDD’s are NTFS, I have much much larger files than 4 gig, not .wav files sure, but I do not believe it’s that.
If that even were the case wouldn’t more than 2 hours (Which would be under 3 gigs of info in my setup) be available to view?
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The issue is that WAV files, by definition, are limited to 4G size on 32-bit systems. It may be possible to open and play the file on a 64-bit system using a 64-bit application (like Sound Forge)and converting it into a W64 file, or using that application to split the file into smaller parts, but I’ve never tried that so I don’t know if it will work.
You stated in your original post that you recorded at 48K/32-Bit. Are you sure about the 32-Bit setting? and if so, why?
A 5 hour / 2-track recording done at 48K/24-Bit would yield an approximate 4.83G file, which is still too large. Dropping it down to 48K/16-Bit would get you to 3.2G, which should play on anyting
Try going to http://www.sounddevices.com and look for a free download application called “Wave Agent”. It has a utility built in that will split polyphonic files into separate monophonic ones. You’ll end up with two files (one for each track), but the file sizes will be half (3.5G?) of what the original was.
Michael Paul
Location Sound Corp -
Oh.. I see, damn.
It is definitely 32 bit yes, it says so right in the Recordpad settings and if I right click the .wav and go to properties it says the Sample Size is 32bit.
I’m playing around with Audacity right now, I found someone with a similar problem who managed to use Import Raw to get it back..
I will try the Wave Agent though, thanks.
Geez, this is what I get for not researching file formats. I suppose it would be smarter to use something like Soundforge in the future? Since then I’ll have a project to save rather than it just auto-writing a .wav file.
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Gah.. Just tried wave agent, it only recognises the playable audio from the offset, splitting the files resulted in two mono 1.3 gig files of the same play-length.
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Okay, I have solved my problem.
I used a program called audiohack to split the file a couple times and then re-make them as .raw files.. after doing that audacity could read them and I resaved as three .wav files.. it all seems to be in there with no loss of quality.
Phew… won’t be making this mistake again, 2 hour video limit for me from now on with recordpad… I should look into a project-based recorder though, just for my sanity.
Thanks for the help anyway. 🙂
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