file won't go over 2GB

[Robert J. H.]

I work always with the newest alpha version and I've not encountered any fatal crashes or bugs.
It is certainly a bad idea to go back to an older version with e.g. an inferior resampling library.

[dfmcwade]

Can somebody tell me about the RF64?

[steve]

Can somebody tell me about the RF64?

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RF64

[Gale Andrews]

I do not seem to have an RF64 plug-in for my Audacity, which is now presently 2.0.2.

In your first post you said you had 2.0.5.

2.0.5 has the latest bug fixes, so it is better to stay with 2.0.5 (or use 2.0.6-alpha if you accept such risk as there is).

Can this be found?

Both 2.0.2 and 2.0.5 can export RF64 using the instructions I already linked to.

To write the instructions out for you:

1. File > Export...
2. Choose "Other uncompressed files"
3. Click the "Options..." button at bottom right
4. Choose "RF64 (RIFF64)" Header
5. Choose the bit depth in "Encoding". If you choose 16-bit encoding and 44100 Hz project rate it will use 600 MB of space per hour for stereo or 300 MB per hour for mono, just like WAV (Microsoft) 16-bit PCM. So it is twice as large as FLAC.

Note that Windows Media Player won't play RF64. VLC and Foobar2000 will.

we concluded that it must have been an older version of Audacity that was allowing me to make files over 2GB. That simply follows logically from the facts.

The facts suggest that since the 2 GB limitation was not fixed until at least libflac 1.2.2, and versions of Audacity before 2.0.6-alpha used libflac 1.2.1 or earlier, then some other application than Audacity on Windows produced those large FLAC files. Audacity on Mac or Linux may have produced them.

Gale

[dfmcwade]

However, the facts of which I speak suggest that:

A. I recorded well over a dozen marathon shows between 2007 and 2013.
B. Those shows were saved to Flac via some sort of Audacity.
C. Many of those shows were over 2GB, as I have proven with the screen shot to this thread.
D. I did not use ANY other operating system other than Windows for PC. Between 2007 and 2009 it was Windows XP. Between 2009 and 2013 it was Windows Vista. I did NOT use Linux. I did not use Mac.
E. My last marathon radio show was BEFORE I got the new computer. This would have been January 2013.
F. There are several verisons of Audacity that were produced in 2012 -- 2.0.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2.
G. Before that, the last known update was in 2008 and that was 1.2.6.
H. Let's repeat: I got many files to go over 2GB, with some older version of Audacity, using a PC.

So, the facts are suggesting that either I used something between 2.0.0 and 2.0.2 or that I didn't update between 2012 and January 2013 and then perhaps I used an older version (such as 1.2.6). So, what I tried to do (this is called troubleshooting) was load an older version 2.0.2 and record a long file. Which I did. And guess what? It was overcompressed and is only 2GB. So, it behooves me to try an older version of Audacity. Which I plan to do. I will let you know the results.

[dfmcwade]

And thank you for the RF64 information. It at least offers me another option depending on what I find out.

[Gale Andrews]

it behooves me to try an older version of Audacity. Which I plan to do. I will let you know the results.

To put it simply for you, if you can find an obsolete version of Audacity on Windows that exports FLAC over 2 GB, then you will be exposing yourself to more bugs than the current latest 2.0.6-alpha version has.

I can tell you that Audacity 1.2.6 on Windows does not export FLAC at all:
http://legacywiki.audacityteam.org/wiki ... leaseNotes .

To save yourself some time exporting huge files, you could obtain "MediaInfo" from http://mediaarea.net/download/binary/me ... staller.7z

You would have to install 7-Zip to extract that 7z file ( http://www.7-zip.org/ ). If you opened the FLAC file over 2 GB in MediaInfo and looked at the line for "Writing Application" it would tell you what version of libflac or other application wrote the file.

Do you think you used "Custom FFmpeg export" instead of "FLAC files" to export the over 2 GB FLAC files from Audacity? It could be an explanation.

Note: Do not download EXE files of MediaInfo because they may harm your computer. The EXE bundles confusing or malicious programs with the installer but the 7z file is safe.


Gale

[steve]

Do your old, very large Flac files play correctly to the end?

I rarely use Windows, but I was not aware of any version of Audacity supporting Flac files greater than 2 GB. "MediaInfo" may provide the answer to this mystery.

[hellosailor]

IIRC file size is also limited by the format used on the media. FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, all have different file size limits, regardless of the OS or the file type. A fast web search should confirm if that's your problem. Also, MS has kneecapped the format options in the most recent versions of Windows, you may find you can't always format media the way you want, without third party software to do the formatting. Although Windows may be perfectly happy to recognize the media, after something else formats it.

[Gale Andrews]

IIRC file size is also limited by the format used on the media. FAT32, exFAT, NTFS, all have different file size limits, regardless of the OS or the file type.

True, but the OP already said they are on NTFS so the maximum file size there is 256 terabytes.


Gale