"Error Opening File"

[kozikowski]

I'm trying to figure out a direction to go with this. I think it's a Leopard problem myself. Vista/Leopard caused all sorts of weird and wacky problems that nobody had ever had before. And they're so new, nobody has any experience on either one or enough hands-on to generate the work-arounds.

Couple that with the Audacity team trying to push 1.4 out the door and that leaves 0.00 people trying to patch the earlier Audacity. I would rather open a vein that upgrade to either Leopard or Vista (Windows). I like my stable machines just as they are, thanks.

Nothing jumps out at me, so we have to get detectivey.

Start a recording in Audacity similar to the one that you have in your little voice recorder. If it's stereo, be stereo. Go the same amount of time. Start recording your built-in microphone, for example, and go shopping. Export as MP3 and see if you can open that file. Do you have the software called "lame?" You need that to export a performance as MP3.

Koz

[SBrierley]

FIGURED OUT A WORKAROUND... Hi, I did a bunch of experiments and came to the conclusion that the problem was a combination problem involving file size AND something about using the mp3 output from a freeware application, Switch. Small .mp3 files converted from .wma in Switch were fine, larger ones were not. I discovered that .mp3 files saved via Audacity were no problem to open, no matter what the size. Soooo I googled a little more & found EasyWMA (http://www.easywma.com), tried their demo and then bought the application for $10, and.... success!! This is an application written specifically for Macs (and it specifically lists it as being helpful for converting files from an Olympus voice recorder -- which is what I have). It converts wma's (also wmv audio, asf & ogg vorbis files) to aiff, mp3, m4a or wav formats. The best thing is, the mp3 file that it creates can be opened in Audacity!

Thanks for all of your suggestions, Koz!

[kozikowski]

Excellent #1 ---You were able to systematically diagnose the problem and carefully find a work-around that is appropriate to your workload.

Excellent #2 ---You posted back and shared details of your fix so other people with similar problems will be able to build on your work.

That's how the forums are supposed to work.

Thanks again,

Koz