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Topic: Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB (Read 7812 times) previous topic - next topic
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Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

A piece of hardware/software I just purchased allows me to to tune FM radio stations and record them via USB to WAV files.

I did this last night and it worked really well.  A local radio station had a non-stop weekend dance mix I wanted to record.  I stopped and started approximately every hour (when they would break for about 5 minutes of commercials) and it saved each session to its own WAV file.

Now, the last session, I fell asleep (it was late night, from 9:00pm to 5:00am) and ended up recording about 2.5 hours to a very large WAV file.

I discovered this WAV file to be almost 2.3 GB.

Now, nothing I have will open this huge WAV file and allow to me to encode to MP3 or AAC.  Nor can I even open it to possibly break it up into smaller parts.

I am running Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium.

Is there any piece of software that will properly deal with this large WAV file and allow me to play it, seek, and then extract portion(s) to smaller WAV files?

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #1 –
Audacity. Import it as "raw data".

Or encode to e.g. FLAC. An example:
flac --ignore-chunk-sizes -6 - -o result.flac < large.wav

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #2 –
Quote from: WonderSlug on
Now, nothing I have will open this huge WAV file and allow to me to encode to MP3 or AAC.  Nor can I even open it to possibly break it up into smaller parts.


This is a common bug.  The size field in your wav is an unsigned int32 (and so goes up to 4GB).  A lot of software treats it as a signed int (and thus overflows at 2GB).  Off hand I don't remember what works and what doesn't, but you can probably just try a few editors until you find one that works.

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #3 –
I tried an experiment and recorded 5:37 in Audition which created a 3.6 GB file. If you can't deal with the big file put it on a DVD, mail it here and I'll cut it into smaller chunks and mail it back on a DVD or CD. Email if interested.

G²

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #4 –
That is hardly necessary if it is trivial for the OP to achieve the same result personally using other software.

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #5 –
Quote
A piece of hardware/software I just purchased allows me to to tune FM radio stations and record them via USB to WAV files.
What software?

Most recording software records directly to a proprietary PCM format without these limitations.  It's usually only after you stop recording and save-as WAV that you run into trouble.  If this happens again, you can try saving-as another format such as FLAC, MP3, AAC, etc. 

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #6 –
I suggest looking into w64 for the future if that is an option with the recording software you mentioned.

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #7 –
Quote from: DVDdoug on
what software?

Most recording software records directly to a proprietary PCM format without these limitations.  It's usually only after you stop recording and save-as WAV that you run into trouble.  If this happens again, you can try saving-as another format such as FLAC, MP3, AAC, etc.


It's a hardware/software combo from ADSTech that I bought at my local computer store for just $12

It is a very small FM Stereo and AM tuner with retractable antenna (one of those slide coil things that can reel out to about 3 feet)  that has a 6" long USB cable that plugs into a USB port.

The software is a proprietary piece of software on CD called Instant Radio that functions much like a car AM/FM tuner with 16-station memory, seek, scan, etc.  It runs on Windows 2000/XP/Vista/Win7

When you click on the record button, it automatically starts recording directly to a WAV file.  Then stopping and clicking record again starts record to another WAV file.  It automatically names them something like "FM-Stereo-001.WAV", "FM-Stereo-002.WAV", etc.

However, by default, on Windows 7, the settings are 16-bit Stereo 96 KHz sampling, which I don't know why it needs to do this high sample rate for analog FM Stereo or AM.  I can't change this because the option field for this is greyed out in the app's options.


Back to the main topic, I'll try importing into Audacity as a RAW file as lvqcl says and see about exporting to two WAV files, each less than 2 GB, and see if I can then properly encode to MP3.

Thanks for everyone's help.

Dealing with WAV file larger than 2GB

Reply #8 –
Since your file is less than 4 GB, first try to open it in Audacity as WAV. Chances are high that it will handle it properly.