Re: [ARSCLIST] File Size Confusion

[Mike Richter <mrichter@xxxxxxx>]

Brandon Burke wrote:
> All,
>
> I was asked to pull a 10 minute section out of a much longer file today, 
> but am unable to open it in WaveLab. It is an 8 hour(!) recording from 
> one of our collections, committed to digital by the donor a handful of 
> years ago, and saved as one continuous MP3. (I know, brilliant...)
>
> Here's the specs on the file...
> File Format: MP3
> Properties: Mono / 48.0 kHz / 64 kbps
> Length: 8h34mn222ms
> Size: 235.29 MB
>
> What's confusing me is this: The file is 235 MB but I cannot open it 
> because (about 65% of the way though the decoding process) WaveLab 5 
> says that the file exceeds the 2GB size limit.  What gives..?
>
> I am able to open the file in Windows Media Player, iTunes, and other 
> apps without an editing component BUT i obviously need to edit it in 
> order to chop out the 10 minute section mentioned above.
>
> Can anyone suggest a way to open this file in an editing app (preferably 
> WaveLab 5)..?
>
>
> thanks as always...and apologies if this is a dumb question,
> Brandon

It's all perfectly reasonable. To open the file in an editor, it must be 
decompressed and held in a decompressed form. Assuming that "48.0 kHz" 
is 48.0 ksps, compression to 64 Kbps is very strange indeed - about 
12:1. Thus, the 235 MB file will expand to nearly 3 GB within the editor 
and that is clearly too much for the program to deal with.

There is freeware to edit MP3s in simple ways such as splitting. Since I 
do not use it, I cannot offer a recommendation except to explore the 
WWW, try some until you find one that does not attempt to do too much 
and therefore can/will split the file for you without expanding it.

Mike
--
mrichter@xxxxxxx
http://www.mrichter.com/