Computer froze last night

datman wrote on 11/25/2012, 1:28 PM
Time to replace my laptop. 2nd time this old HP single core P4 failed on me. This was with a fresh install. It froze 3 hours into a set. I was recording 4 channels at 24/96. For years never a hiccup, I ended up with 2 wave files nearly 6 gigs big but I can’t seem to open them. When I open them in SF its like nothing is there but its almost 6g big. Any way to recover these?

Comments

musicvid10 wrote on 11/25/2012, 4:30 PM
I'm not aware of any recovery possible for oversize WAV files.
A conventional WAV file must not exceed 4GB. Its a 32 bit limitation

If you even suspect it will be close to that, you must record and render using the WAV64 codec.
Chienworks wrote on 11/25/2012, 5:06 PM
You could try opening them as RAW. That will ignore any header information, which is probably useless, and let you specify your own parameters for bit depth, sample rate, channels, lsb/msb, etc. You'll have to make some good guesses at how many bytes to skip to get past the current headers and into the audio data.

I'd suggest you open a good file recorded the same way with the same settings and examine the properties of that file closely. That should give you the majority of the settings you'll need to open in RAW mode.

And indeed, immediately save as a new W64 file.
datman wrote on 11/26/2012, 9:06 AM
thats a good idea. However I don't see how I can open them as a raw file.
datman wrote on 11/29/2012, 8:37 PM
any more ideas how to recover these files? I never did figure out how to open them as a raw file.
musicvid10 wrote on 11/29/2012, 11:21 PM
Change the file extension to .raw
If you don't know how to change a file extension in Windows, Google is your friend.
Don't hold your breath.
datman wrote on 11/30/2012, 1:46 PM
Thanks yes google is my friend. I changed it to raw and w64 neither worked. oh well
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2012, 3:50 PM
When you tried raw, did you get garbage/static, or did it refuse to open at all?
Chienworks wrote on 11/30/2012, 3:52 PM
Ohhhh, also should mention that opening RAW files is a function of Sound Forge, not Vegas.
datman wrote on 11/30/2012, 11:52 PM
It opened just like before and it was as if only a few seconds of nothing was recorded, in 24/96

Its about time to give up on this, in my research it has been suggested that my problem is software related. Do you know of any bugs with Vegas 9.0 with XP in older pcmcia interfaces. I'm betting my older 3.0 that always worked may still work.
musicvid10 wrote on 12/1/2012, 11:04 PM
This has already been explained to you.

The WAV format is limited to files that are less than 4 GB, because of its use of a 32-bit unsigned integer to record the file size header.

It affects all installations. It has absolutely nothing to do with the software. Sony invented the WAV64 render format in order to work around that limitation.
datman wrote on 12/4/2012, 9:25 PM
Just to be clear some kind of an error caused the computer to freeze up. The 5.8 gig wav files are a result of that error.

I'm going to go with the idea that Vegas 9.0 does not work with my older laptop and pcmcia Echo Mona interface. I will revert back to Vegas 3.0 for recording.

It would be my belief that the record sound quality will be the same.
theWizaKidd wrote on 12/5/2012, 10:39 AM
I had this happen voluntarily when I forgot to stop recording and save my vegas file. I recorded audio for about 2 hrs. I closed the laptop and it went to sleep. When I immediately opened and resumed again, vegas left me with a 4.6 Gb file that was raw.

I was able to recover this file using Audacity, as it has the ability to read and fix headers, and re-rendered the files to .wav.

Just thought you might try that to recover your files.