Importing WAV

[palawan]

I recorded audio on my Canon S5IS and when I import into Audacity 1.2.6, the time duration for the WAV file is reduced by a factor of about 25. What happened? I have other WAV files that import fine. Bit rate 1411kbps, sample size 16 bit, sample rate 44 kHz, audio format PCM.

[kozikowski]

<<<format PCM.>>>

Best money is that it's not a simple PCM file. Those would have played. A sound file that plays like a jet airplane is usually a compressed format and it's a compression that Audacity doesn't understand. Audacity throws up its hands and plays it as a straight sound file. If the music is 25 to 1 compressed, then the show will go by 25 times faster.

If you have Windows set to show you file extensions, I bet those files are really m4a or AAC files, not PCM.

In any event, Super or Switch should be able to convert the files into WAV which Audacity will open up just fine.

Another clue is the file size. Real PCM files take up about 700MB per hour. If you do your arithmetic and your files are a lot smaller than they're supposed to be, then you have compressed sound files, it doesn't matter what the documentation or settings say.

Koz

[palawan_2]

I'm the same person as palawan. The file extension generated by my canon still camera is wav. The 64 second sound clip is 10.7 MB, or 600 MB/hour.

[steve]

Download a copy of SUPER by erightsoft (it's free but it's a pain downloading it because of the link jungle, but keep hitting the download links and avoiding the advert links and you'll get it - it's worth the effort because this is a really good format converter with several other very nice features - and it's free).

SUPER has a feature where is analyses the file and gives basic / advanced information about it.
Make a dummy WAV file by exporting a track from Audacity and use Super to analyse each file - you will probably notice that there is something different.

Whether they appear to be the same or different, use SUPER to "convert" the camera WAV file into a WAV file. If there is anything weird about the camera WAV file, this should sort it out.