Cant import WAV files created from Canon camera- SOLVED

[DRCO]

Hi everyone,
I'm a new Audacity user and have read through as much as possible - but have a real problem. I use a Canon Powershot TXI device to record sound for FLASH animation. The Canon, in voice recorder mode, gives high quality output in WAV format, which I can replay on windows media player, iTunes etc... - no problem. But when I import into Audacity, all I get is a click - or loud static sound. Any ideas?

[DRCO]

Hi to anyone attempting to help me out here. I have found a workaround that gets the file in by using the "import as raw data" function under the Project tab - please don't spend any time on this if you are researching to try to help me out I don't want to waste anyone's time.

[steve]

Thanks for your input DRCO.
Problems importing files from camcorders and similar devices are not uncommon. Audacity expects well formed files that conform to the appropriate file format specification, but these type of devices will often use non-standard formats or non-standard file headers. The general solution is to use a "transcoder" program that can "convert" the file into a correctly formatted form - in some cases this is just a matter of adding the correct header information and not changing the data at all. In other cases it requires compressed file types to be uncompressed and converted to standard WAV files. On Windows I use the free program "SUPER" (by erightsoft) for converting media files as it supports virtually all media formats (except Real Media). "16 bit 44100 Hz PCM WAV" files are a safe option for virtually all audio software (pretty well universally supported).
Glad you got it working.