how to import WAV file

[Suellen]

I have in my computer a WAV file that was uploaded off of my digital recorder. It sounds fine, but I'd like to use Audacity to edit errors and tighten up the words. When I try to import to Audacity, it opens as only a fraction of a second long. The actual file is 18 minutes. What did I do wrong?

[kozikowski]

What did I do wrong?

Assume it's a WAV file. It's not, or Audacity would be able to play it. You can play it anyway in Audacity 1.3.12 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

And get the FFMpeg and lame software packages from the same place and install both.

You don't have to uninstall Audacity 1.2. You can have both, but don't try to use them at the same time. Audacity 1.3 Projects will not open in 1.2.

Koz

[gradstudent36]

I am having this same problem - I checked and the files are "WMA" files, not "WAV" files as I had thought, so I downloaded the Beta version & the add-ons you suggested but it still will not recognize the recordings - only now it tells me that it cannot open the file, whereas previously it looked like it had opened the file but it was only 20 seconds long and a highpitched whine.

Any other suggestions??
Thanks

[steve]

Unfortunately Microsoft keep bringing out different versions of WMA, and FFmpeg does not yet support all versions.
If FFmpeg cannot convert the file you will need to use a third party format converter to convert them to a supported format (I would recommend converting to WAV) before importing into Audacity.

A good, free format converter for Windows is SUPER by erightsoft.