Subject:Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Posted by: saydel

Date:11/1/2006 8:23:02 AM

Hi,

I have a bit of dilemma with an MP3 file recorded with SF7. We had an all-day conference on Friday from 9 to 5. I used SONY Hi MD recorder to record the entire session in one disc. However, the conference was going to be continued the next day, and I didn’t have a spare disc. So I left it on capture with Sound Forge overnight. The next morning when I came back to work, I saved the 14 hours (5 hours plus overnight) of recording as an MP3 (128 kbps) file. When I played the file in SF, I could hear the sound and see the sound waves. So I erased the Hi MD disc to rerecord the conference for Saturday. Unfortunately when I came back to my office and tried to edit the first day’s audio, SF7 crashed on me. I later found out that the file size was enormous (8.9 GB) and it would not open in Sound Forge any more or any other application. It keeps saying “can not open file, file format unknown”. Is there anyway I can recover the audio file or open it in Sound Forge? Please help as I feel like Murphy’s Law became the universal truth to me.

Thanks.

PS: Saturday’s audio file came out fine and much less in file size (250 MB for 3.5 hrs)

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: Iacobus

Date:11/1/2006 9:52:36 AM

If memory serves, Sound Forge 7 had the crash recovery feature, didn't it? Did it ask if you wanted to try to recover the file?

Iacobus

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: saydel

Date:11/1/2006 11:12:28 AM

Yes it did ask. However, it wasn't able to recover the file.

While "trying hard", I chose to open the mp3 as a RAW file and got 1 hr 23 min of recording. But couldn't get it to open everything. Any ideas?

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: ATP

Date:11/1/2006 2:28:19 PM

probably a silly thought, but did you try renaming the file to .wav and then opening it in SF?

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: saydel

Date:11/2/2006 6:30:05 AM

i changed the extension to all possible audio extensions that can be opened with SF. Didn't work.

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:11/2/2006 3:25:21 PM

8.9GB for 14 hours is most likely a CD quality (44.1KHz 16 bit stereo) .wav file. You apparently merely saved the file and didn't encode it to MP3. (Did you merely type in MP3 as the extension without changing the file type to MP3?) Unfortunately .wav files are limited to 2GB, so the last 6.9GB aren't accessible. That would work out to about 3 hours 9 minutes' worth OK and 10 hours 51 minutes' worth beyond the point of accessibility.

Opening it as a RAW mode file may work as long as it hasn't been corrupted by some other software. You'll need to know the exact header size and file parameters to do this though. As i mentioned above, it's probably 44.1KHz 16 bit stereo. Perhaps someone who has more experience with this can help you determine the header size. Once you have it open, save it as a .w64 file which is a SONY version of .wav that isn't limited to 2GB.

If you're unsuccessful with that, you may have to find some utility that will let you chop the file up into pieces under 2GB, then open each individually in RAW mode.

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: saydel

Date:11/3/2006 8:17:13 AM

I chose the option to save it as 128 kbps mp3 file. I didn't put in the .mp3 extension manually as I know that SF will do that automatically.

I duplicated the file before opening it with any software. Both the original and duplicate audio file are 1 hr 23 min when opened as .raw file in SF.

I tried to chop the file using several software but nothing help. Do you have any particular software in mind?

Thanks for the help.

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: saydel

Date:11/3/2006 9:56:14 AM

SUCCESS!!!

I tried so many paid programs to chop the file but they were all failures! This morning (while consuming my hot chocolate) I thought, why not spilt the file instead of chopping it. I used HJSplit (a freeware from http://www.freebyte.com/hjsplit/) to split the files as 999MB files. Even though files were created with extensions .001 .002 and so on, I changed the extensions of each files to .mp3 and was able to open and edit them in Sound Forge.

I now have the entire conference edited and saved. I just thought to share this information so anyone who might have the same problem can recover their audio file.

Subject:RE: Need Help w/ MP3 recorded with SF7

Reply by: Chienworks

Date:11/3/2006 3:23:32 PM

I still think somehow the file was actually CD quality .wav, otherwise the math doesn't work out. An 8.9GB 128Kbps file would play for 162 hours. If it was really .wav then that would also explain the difficulties you had.