Problem with long file length

[UpTilDawn]

Earlier this week I made an unattended 2hr+, 28-track recording in Sonar 7. When I went to import the tracks to SAW today, I discovered that the files were given a .w64 extension. These won't open in SAW.

I understand from reading up on it a bit that these extensions are a SoundForge file extension given to files that are longer than "normal"..... I can't get a bead on how long they can be before they're not written as .wav files... but that's not the point.

I tried opening one file in SoundForge 6, but the file still had not opened after nearly five minutes, so I'm not sure I'll get this to work with the tools I have on hand.

I've read recent discussions about the 2GB file size limits, etc. and followed them fairly carefully, but now I can't find the discussions (of course ).

Would someone point me in the right direction to figure out what to do with these tracks?

I'd really appreciate any help!

[Dave Labrecque]

Earlier this week I made an unattended 2hr+, 28-track recording in Sonar 7. When I went to import the tracks to SAW today, I discovered that the files were given a .w64 extension. These won't open in SAW.

I understand from reading up on it a bit that these extensions are a SoundForge file extension given to files that are longer than "normal"..... I can't get a bead on how long they can be before they're not written as .wav files... but that's not the point.

I tried opening one file in SoundForge 6, but the file still had not opened after nearly five minutes, so I'm not sure I'll get this to work with the tools I have on hand.

I've read recent discussions about the 2GB file size limits, etc. and followed them fairly carefully, but now I can't find the discussions (of course ).

Would someone point me in the right direction to figure out what to do with these tracks?

I'd really appreciate any help!

Dan,

I ran into this issue a few months back. Can't seem to find the relevant thread right now. When I'm in the studio tomorrow, I'll have a look at what I did. Meantime, check out the thread:

http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/...&highlight=w64

The last post references the W64 file type.

In my case, I think I recorded too long in SAW, such that the resulting WAV file would not let me hear or see all the data past a certain point. The answer was to convert it to a W64 file, which, IIRC, I was then able to open in Sound Forge, then cut and paste portions of the whole thing to smaller segments that I saved as WAVs.

I'm pretty sure you should be able to open it in SF, then do as I did.

If I find out more tomorrow, I'll let you know.

UPDATE: did a quick Google and found this:

WAV2W64

I think that may be what I used, though it sounds like it won't help you. Sorry. Really -- try Sound Forge again. Remember, you can cancel the waveform drawing if you don't want to wait. Performance will be a little slower as you edit, but it'll still work.

[UpTilDawn]

Dan,

I ran into this issue a few months back. Can't seem to find the relevant thread right now. When I'm in the studio tomorrow, I'll have a look at what I did. Meantime, check out the thread:

http://www.sawstudiouser.com/forums/...&highlight=w64

The last post references the W64 file type.

In my case, I think I recorded too long in SAW, such that the resulting WAV file would not let me hear or see all the data past a certain point. The answer was to convert it to a W64 file, which, IIRC, I was then able to open in Sound Forge, then cut and paste portions of the whole thing to smaller segments that I saved as WAVs.

I'm pretty sure you should be able to open it in SF, then do as I did.

If I find out more tomorrow, I'll let you know.

UPDATE: did a quick Google and found this:

WAV2W64

I think that may be what I used, though it sounds like it won't help you. Sorry. Really -- try Sound Forge again. Remember, you can cancel the waveform drawing if you don't want to wait. Performance will be a little slower as you edit, but it'll still work.

Thanks for looking into it Dave. I was pretty sure that some of the more recent (and interesting, of course ) discussions involved you.

Reading the threads linked in the thread you linked to, I'm left wondering why Sonar stored these files as .w64 in the first place? The session was somewhere between 2 and 2 1/2 hrs, so I would think I would have been okay even with the 96k/24bit recording rates. I'm also scratching my head over why sonar stored the files on the C-drive and in a folder it created for them...... because I specifically marked it to include the audio files in a subfolder of the session folder on the "D" drive (which it generally does just fine) on this pc.

I copied them over to that drive this morning by saving the same session with a different name to the folder I originally intended (when I happened to notice the .w64 file extension for the first time). I intended to open them up into SAW tonight like I always do.... then tried opening just one file up in SoundForge, but so far no go.... I'll give it another shot if you really think Soundforge should be able to open them.

______________________________

I don't own Sonar, so I couldn't re-open the session at home in that program.
I also couldn't figure out a way to cut down the Sonar session and divide it into two smaller sets of files in the half-hour I had to mess with it (or even two smaller sessions with half the recordings in each session...... easy as pie in SAW!)... but I'm not that familiar with editing in Sonar.

Please, let me know whatever you do find! I'm stuck.

________________

I also can't seem to use the Search function in the Sonar forums, nor can I log in or anything other than open threads and read posts for some reason. Don't know if it's just my luck, or a site problem, or I would have asked around there before asking here... except that I know I can pretty much trust people's responses here and I like that!

[DominicPerry]

Reaper will open a W64 file. You could download it, split the files and export as another format. You might even want to buy a license, only $40 at the moment. Or not. Call the conversion your 'evaluation'.

Dominic

[UpTilDawn]

I might give reaper a shot if I don't have any success this afternoon.
Finally got onto the Sonar search forums and discovered that there might be a problem with opening Sonar's w64 files in soundforge... although going from a SoundForge w64 file to Sonar is not a problem... Strange stuff.

I'm in the process of trying to split the original long files in Sonar down to smaller chunks to later import to SAW. The results of my attempts won't be known until much later today, as I am trying to do this in between classes.

We'll see what turns up.

[Dave Labrecque]

I might give reaper a shot if I don't have any success this afternoon.
Finally got onto the Sonar search forums and discovered that there might be a problem with opening Sonar's w64 files in soundforge... although going from a SoundForge w64 file to Sonar is not a problem... Strange stuff.

I'm in the process of trying to split the original long files in Sonar down to smaller chunks to later import to SAW. The results of my attempts won't be known until much later today, as I am trying to do this in between classes.

We'll see what turns up.

I found this, but it may not be of use to you:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W64_Self-rescuer

Not today, anyway.

Ahem... hey, if it's some kind of weird proprietary Sonar spin on w64, you're probably best doing this in Sonar, eh?