.wav file too big to open.. -Sound Forge - PC - MAGIX Community Forums Archive

Subject:.wav file too big to open.. Posted by: Nathan323 Date:9/23/2006 5:06:42 PM Howdy all, I have a wav file that is 2,220,318,766 bytes (just over 2 GB). When trying to open in sound forge 8.0d, it says "the application does not support this file type". i cant open it in windows media player either. I made the file by recording an internet radio stream, & my hard drive eventually ran out of space. i then cut & pasted the file onto a different drive. do u think that allowing the wav file to record to the opint of hard drive error, it corrupted the file? is there no way i could open it in ANY program to at least LISTEN to the file? thanks for any help, nathan
Subject:RE: .wav file too big to open.. Reply by: MarkWWW Date:9/24/2006 5:18:12 AM You've got two problems here probably. Firstly, the rules for .WAV files say they have a maximum size of 2GB. (2GB is the maximum size that can be described using a signed 32-bit number which the .WAV standard uses to identify the length of the various chunks that te .WAV file may be composed of. It would have been more sensible to use an unsigned 32-bit number for these chumk lengths, since they could never be negative, but that's not what the rules say.) Many applications will not play a WAV file that is larger than 2GB even if it is otherwise perfectly OK. I'm not sure if Sound Forge 8 is this fussy, but it might be. (Sonic Foundry designed the .W64 format specifically to get round this limitation in .WAV files.) Secondly, and more importantly, if the recording did not finish normally (as is the case when a file fills up the remaining disc space before the recording completes) the you will have a situation where the file was not written correctly - specifically, all the audio data will be correct but the item in the header which contains the length of the recording will be incorrect, probably set to some dummy value like zero. (This is because until the recording is complete the application can't know how long the file will be and so it doesn't know what value to put in the header to indicate the length, of course. And if the recording does not complete normally, this item will never be set to its correct value.) The solution is to open te file in Sound Forge as a RAW file, not as a WAV file. This will treat the whole of the file as though it is audio data of some undetermined type, so you will have to manually tell it whether it is 16-bit or 24-bit audio, what the sample rate is, etc, hopefully all of which will be things you know. If you tell it the correct values Sound Forge will open the file and allow you to play it and save it as some other format. You may need to save it in two halves if it is over 2GB and you want to save it as a WAV file. You will get a splat at the beginning of the file which is the header data being mis-interpreted as audio data. Easiest way toi deal with this is just to chop it off using Sound Forges editing tools. Or, more neatly, you can enter a suitable value in the Header box in the RAW data entry box to tell Sound Forge to skip over the header data when it imports the file as RAW data. (You will need to experiment a bit with the value to choose for the size of the header to skip just the header - inspecting the beginning of the file using a hex editor will allow you to work out the correct amount to skip if you understand the format of a WAV file. But if not you can just chop off the splat as described above.) Hope that helps. Mark
Subject:RE: .wav file too big to open.. Reply by: Nathan323 Date:9/24/2006 11:51:42 PM Hey mate, Thanks for the quick & detailed reply. Worked like a charm! Thanks again, Nathan

You've got two problems here probably.

Firstly, the rules for .WAV files say they have a maximum size of 2GB. (2GB is the maximum size that can be described using a signed 32-bit number which the .WAV standard uses to identify the length of the various chunks that te .WAV file may be composed of. It would have been more sensible to use an unsigned 32-bit number for these chumk lengths, since they could never be negative, but that's not what the rules say.) Many applications will not play a WAV file that is larger than 2GB even if it is otherwise perfectly OK. I'm not sure if Sound Forge 8 is this fussy, but it might be. (Sonic Foundry designed the .W64 format specifically to get round this limitation in .WAV files.)

Secondly, and more importantly, if the recording did not finish normally (as is the case when a file fills up the remaining disc space before the recording completes) the you will have a situation where the file was not written correctly - specifically, all the audio data will be correct but the item in the header which contains the length of the recording will be incorrect, probably set to some dummy value like zero. (This is because until the recording is complete the application can't know how long the file will be and so it doesn't know what value to put in the header to indicate the length, of course. And if the recording does not complete normally, this item will never be set to its correct value.)

The solution is to open te file in Sound Forge as a RAW file, not as a WAV file. This will treat the whole of the file as though it is audio data of some undetermined type, so you will have to manually tell it whether it is 16-bit or 24-bit audio, what the sample rate is, etc, hopefully all of which will be things you know. If you tell it the correct values Sound Forge will open the file and allow you to play it and save it as some other format. You may need to save it in two halves if it is over 2GB and you want to save it as a WAV file. You will get a splat at the beginning of the file which is the header data being mis-interpreted as audio data. Easiest way toi deal with this is just to chop it off using Sound Forges editing tools. Or, more neatly, you can enter a suitable value in the Header box in the RAW data entry box to tell Sound Forge to skip over the header data when it imports the file as RAW data. (You will need to experiment a bit with the value to choose for the size of the header to skip just the header - inspecting the beginning of the file using a hex editor will allow you to work out the correct amount to skip if you understand the format of a WAV file. But if not you can just chop off the splat as described above.)

Hope that helps.

Mark