Audacity Forum

So my teacher allowed me to record the class as I have difficulty taking notes and have attention problems ; during each course, I'm ok for a larger portion but there's always at least one small portion that I'm out of it. The academic problem aside, I have an audio problem. I'm recording with my camera that have a good (not great) sound for voice and it's exactly what I need to record. The camera is Casio Exilim EX-V7 and the codec (taken from VLC) of its audio recordings is IMA WAV ADCP Audio (ms) ; other info: mono, 11025Hz, 16bit.

Because I'll have more than a few files to save, I want to save space by cropping leading and trailing unimportant sounds (chatter before course and students getting out). Loving audacity, I've used it to open the wav files but nothing plays. The first thing I notice is that the waveform is perfect, like it was made from a synthesizer or audio production software. Then with the Fit in Window view, about the first 1/4 seem to indicate it's near-silent, the next 1/4 seem to be gaining in volume (lacking the technical term), and the last 1/2 seem like it was too loud and the wave peaks are at the limit (reach a ceiling? level out?). I then notice something that wasn't obvious at all as it's on the same scale, the recording is about 120 minutes and the right-hand time index contained 120 but when I used the Zoom Normal view, it disappeared and after a couple minutes realized the whole thing wasn't even a second long, in fact it was ~0.0120 second ; quite short to weigh 39Mb!

During my course break, I wanted to make an AAC version (so I'd keep that on my computer then move the wav on my backup) but I failed miserably using MediaCoder trying a few codecs. I settled for a VBR MP3 (but wouldn't move the wav before I get the AAC). So IMA ADCP can be converted to MP3 and I suppose the reason it doesn't cut it for aac is the same as I can't play the wav with audacity.

Help or tips on how to get this wav file properly imported so I can edit it's sound would be appreciated.

Update 1:

I modified my profile then viewed my previous posts taking notice to IMA ADPCM can't import, it's odd that google didn't find that in my search. I installed FFmpeg v0.6.2 for Audacity on Windows, I have Audacity version 1.2.6, but still have the same problem ; the waveform still look the same and happen in a split-second.

Update 2:

I noticed there was a 2nd point on the installation guide. Well I still imported the same wav file after the plugin installation but it didn't ask me anything for the configuration and I can't even reach Edit > Preferences: Libraries on Audacity.

Instead of struggling with Audacity 1.2, you should download and install Audacity 1.3 and its associated FFMpeg. That should open up your music files. The sign that the older Audacity doesn't "understand" an audio file is that it plays very, very fast.


Audacity 1.2 is very old and no longer supported,
patched, corrected, or updated. Audacity 1.2 can
be unstable on newer computers.

Download and install the latest Audacity 1.3 from here...

http://audacityteam.org/download/

You can install both audacity 1.2 and Audacity 1.3 on
the same computer, but only use one at a time.

Audacity 1.2 will not open projects made on Audacity 1.3.

If you use MP3 or some of the more modern audio
compression formats, get Lame and FFMpeg software
from the same web site. Do not use older software
or software from other web sites, even though they
may have the same names.

Audacity 1.2 does not support FFMpeg, so this version of Audacity cannot import ADCP encoded files correctly. For FFMpeg support Audacity 1.3 is required (current version is 1.3.13 http://audacityteam.org/download/ )

OK! Now I understand ; in my Program Files folder there was 2 folders beginning by Audacity, the 1st one trailing nothing else (just Audacity) and the 2nd one trailing " 1.3 Beta (Unicode)". The later version is 1.3.10-beta and I suppose I kept 1.2.6 because it was the latest non-beta (and certainly not alpha) version I installed. I did not put the later version in my shortcut (Start) menu so it wasn't obvious to recall the stratagem.

Well I can import (the IMA WAV ADCP) into 1.3.10-beta and I intend to install a more recent version, which should give an even better result. Unless there's an issue importing with the recent version, all should be set.

Thank you kindly for your help

DynV wrote: and I intend to install a more recent version

I'd recommend that you do that sooner rather than later. There's some bugs in 1.3.10 that have now been fixed.

I'm not sure if I should split this into another thread but I'd have to sum-up part of this one... anyway a moderator can split it. With (Audacity version) 1.3.13-beta, I can import my camera wave (IMA WAV ADCP) just fine then can export it in a larger uncompressed wave just fine. My final goal is to end up with AAC so I hoped the AAC export would function but it fails, ending up with a 0 byte file which is locked until I close Audacity. This would save me the step of loading the uncompressed wave into MediaCoder the saving it as AAC ; please note that FAAC encoder has a great result with speech, at 24kbps it sound even better than Nero (Encoder) at 32kbps (24kbps Nero is bad (with speech)).

So I'd like to fix that Audacity AAC export issue to at least make a hearing test ; it might just save me a few clicks and delays each file, it the (small) file size and sound permit.

I've moved the entire thread to the 1.3 part of the forum.

Are you now using Audacity 1.3.13 and the current version of FFMpeg?

Yes. I think this proves it:

DynV wrote:Yes. I think this proves it:

Thanks DynV.
That "proves" that you have Audacity 1.3.13 and FFMpeg 0.6.2 installed, but it doesn't quite prove that you are using those versions.
The proof for the Audacity version is to look in the Audacity Help menu > "About Audacity".
The proof for the FFMpeg version in use is to look in "Edit menu > Preferences > Libraries"

Going slightly off topic, but perhaps useful background information:
I rarely use AAC myself, but I hear that many people that do will use iTunes (or Quicktime) to convert to AAC from WAV because the Apple encoder is particularly good and quick. For lossy compressed format audio, my preferred format is Ogg. It is open source, natively supported by Audacity (no plug-ins or add-ons required), and very good quality vs file size.