Corrupt WAV file recovery

[Ty Ford]

Hi Pete,

Great post! Thanks for stopping by!

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[John Monroe]

great solution however my corrupted files are in m4a format and i have no way to convert them to WAV or another audacity compatible format

[Josh Smeal]

Hi,

I wasn’t sure if anyone had suggested anything for your issue with the m4a format, if you happen to have , perhaps give it a go with your file. I have never tried to convert m4a to anything else, personally, but I’d be interested to know if this works for you. Cheers!

[Joe Bressler]

Hey All

I’m in a similar situation- corrupt file because of battery depletion during recording. In fact, I had pressed the stop button and the moment I did, the zoom powered off.

What I have now is a 372MB file that opens in VLC with a duration of 35:08, however it only has audio for about 25 minutes of this. I also can’t export the full length of the file from VLC because at 25 minutes it says File reading failed/VLC could not read the file (m). When importing as raw data to audacity once again all I get is the first 25 minutes, except this time it is at 200% speed.

Anyone have any ideas as to if I can recover the last ten minutes?

[Ty Ford]

Hello Joe,

you know you can change the sample rate on audacity to make it play at the proper speed, right?

Regards,

Ty Ford
Cow Audio Forum Leader

Want better production audio?: Ty Ford’s Audio Bootcamp Field Guide
Ty Ford Blog: Ty Ford’s Blog

[Joe Bressler]

Hey Ty

Yep, got it. Any thoughts on being able to recover the last ten minutes of this audio file if it’s not already coming up in audacity when I import the raw data?

The duration in VLC being correct gives me some hope as well as the fact that it isn’t a 0kb file

[Bouke Vahl]

The duration of VLC might be meaningless.
What are you feeding VLC?

To know if you can recover it, you need to calculate the duration based on file size…

hth,

Bouke

https://www.videotoolshed.com/
smart tools for video pros

[Joe Bressler]

Hey Bouke,

I am feeding VLC the wav file straight from the SD card. The file size is 372mb vs a 35:08 duration. When I export the file from audacity or VLC it’s about 100mb less, a loss of which seems proportionate to the amount of data that should account for the missing audio.