I tried 2.0.6, 2.1.0, and 2.1.1 on my Macbook Pro. All three behave the same way with respect to trying to import a 633MB audio file.
Attempting to import a 633MB file causes over 7GB (all available space) of temp disk space to be consumed. After consuming all the available disk space over the course of 4 minutes, an error message dialog is raised indicating the temp data cannot be saved. I do not know if this is a problem with the audio file, a mac problem, or a generic problem. If it is a problem with the audio file, then I respectfully argue that the application is not robust enough to handle the condition. I can make the audio file available in a dropbox folder if required. I’d rather not waste any more time diagnosing this unless someone has some ideas that will make the diagnosis go more quickly.
I extracted a DTS track from a movie for editing. This created a 633MB file.
Here’s what mkvinfo says about that track in its original container file.
A track
| + Track number: 2 (track ID for mkvmerge & mkvextract: 1)
| + Track UID: 2411585699
| + Track type: audio
| + Codec ID: A_DTS
| + Default duration: 10.667ms (93.750 frames/fields per second for a video track)
| + Audio track
| + Sampling frequency: 48000
| + Channels: 6
When I attempt to import the file, there are 29 directories created in the temp folder that each hold about 256MB of space. I believe that the import was in an infinite loop and no matter how much free disk space I had it would take all of it.
a DTS track from a movie for editing. This created a 633MB file.
Right. So you didn’t get a 633MB audio file, you got a 633MB DTS Multi-Track highly compressed performance.
Given the Mac has the ability to natively read DTS (I believe it should) it’s entirely possible when uncompressed into its 6 channels of surround, it’s larger than the available space. Do you have a larger external drive you can try? The one you use for your Time Machine backups?
It does and it doesn’t. Core Audio knows about DTS, but hardly any app does. Even Quicktime doesn’t know about DTS. And while Core audio will resample almost anything on the fly, it won’t do so for DTS. There’s no native DTS playback for apps.
There are a few expensive players that play DTS, but that’s about it. The reason is DTS needs a license. You can get around with Open source, but only for playback. And of course, VLC player to the rescue as the one free working exception.
When it comes to editing, the heavyweights usually know about DTS, but to produce it, you’ll need to pay extra for a plugin, or do it in an external tool, like DVD burning software.
Apple has never made surround (Dolby AC3) or HD audio (DTS) easy. It’s in there, but you need to find, enable and config it. The only Apple app that “knew” about those formats, was DVD player. And that one’s gone since Mountain Lion, I think.
AFAIK temp folder size is not limited by OSX. Unless that changed recently? El Capitan?
But more importantly, please confirm that you’re not doing this on a disk that has only 7 GB available. If you really have only 7 GB available, you BADLY need to backup and clean out. OSX needs about 20% free disk space. 10% is OK, but not enough for HD audio, or AV in general.
I extracted a DTS track from a movie for editing. This created a 633MB file.
Here’s what mkvinfo says about that track in its original container file.
A track
| + Track number: 2 (track ID for mkvmerge & mkvextract: 1)
| + Track UID: 2411585699
| + Track type: audio
| + Codec ID: A_DTS
| + Default duration: 10.667ms (93.750 frames/fields per second for a video track)
| + Audio track
| + Sampling frequency: 48000
| + Channels: 6
When I attempt to import the file, there are 29 directories created in the temp folder that each hold about 256MB of space. I believe that the import was in an infinite loop and no matter how much free disk space I had it would take all of it.
There seems to be a long standing bug in ffmpeg:
Interestingly ffmpeg reports the DTS audio to be 5.1 channels as well (after extracting the DTS tracks from the Matroska file). Looks like ffmpeg doesn’t count the extra channels contained in the Master Audio extensions. I’m not sure what the right thing to do would actually be in such a case.
Are you folks trying to say that audacity needs more than twice the disk space as the size of all the input channels? 633mb * 6 is about 3072mb. And audacity, if it was NOT in an infinite loop, “choked” after using more than 7000mb? Really? I’ve used it plenty of times in the past with coming even close to consuming this amount of space on disk. Something is not right.
It doesn’t work like that. 633 is the compressed DTS file size. Decompress it to a much larger file and then split it up to six channels, each one full, uncompressed quality.
Say 2:1 DTS, that gives you 1266. Times 6…
Audacity doesn’t work internally at 16-bit. It works at 32, so the room needs to go up again.
You have way not enough free space to do entertainment production.
But it will only do that efficient trick with flat, uncompressed original files or shows. You hit the jackpot: a poorly supported, highly compressed, multi-channel show.
You clearly do not have ‘plenty of disk space’. While decompressing, the software who does it, needs storage for temp files too.
To decompress an average 1 GB zip file, you need AT LEAST 3 GB of free disk space. and that is a rule of thumb. Meaning it could be worse, because while you’re doing this, OSX is doing other stuff too, also creating temp files. And the resulting file may be much bigger, so it’s just a minimum.
Working on a filled-up start disk is never a good idea. When doing AV editing, it’s a Very Bad Idea™.