No AVI files after recording, only two WAV

spookyfox

I made quite a long recording the other day and when I finished I pressed stop and the window to save the file popped up, I named it 'd' and clicked OK, but an error message appeared, something about the audio. I became anxious so I didn't write down what it said and I closed it in a rush and now I don't remember. But when I went to check the file there are 3:

1 notepad named 'd'
1 WAV called '~temp-20110607_1723_32' that weighs 397MB
1 WAV titled 'd' that weighs 3,47 GB!

The temp file can be played but I can't hear anything, and the 3,47GB file gives me an error when I try to open it. The notepad says '2.6<\version>294<\release><\recorder>'

I cannot grasp the idea that just like that, in those few seconds, I lost all of the recording that was very important, and at the same time have almost 4GBs of useless WAV's. Can anyone help me? Otherwise I can't trust this program anymore, which is a shame because the older version that looked simpler never gave me trouble.

booklover

Since one of the files is well over the 2GB AVI limit, have you tried running it (or, preferably, a copy of the file) through VirtualDub? Even though it says it's a WAV file, it would be worth a try to see if VirtualDub can determine that it really isn't a WAV file. If VirtualDub won't bring it in as a WAV, try changing the extension to AVI (be sure you're working from a copy just in case) and then see if VD can deal with it. You'll get error messages as VD is bringing it in, but just ignore them.

Once the file is in VD, be sure that the Video option is set to Direct Stream Copy, not Full Processing as is its default (be sure to check that Audio is also Direct Stream Copy, which it should be since that's its default). Once both video and audio are confirmed to be set, process with F7. VD will ask you for a file name -- being essentially lazy, I usually just put "VirtDub" at the beginning of the existing file name to make it easy to associate the two files. Be sure you designate where the file is to go.

I've had to use this procedure occasionally when for some reason I let the file get too big or for some unknown reason. So far it's worked, producing a file that's at least usable, although there might be some more editing needed. But I figured that was better than having a totally unusable file.

Good luck!

spookyfox

Thanks a lot for the answer, I will give this a try and tell you how it goes. I've been using the older version of CS I mentioned until recently when I reinstalled windows and CS along with it, the latest version. Before this, I never had the problem with files size, I've recorded videos longer than this one and didn't occupy that much space.

spookyfox

This seems to be working, I have to go but I'll leave this running. I can't tell you how grateful I am for your help. Any advice to avoid this happening again?

booklover

I do almost totally screen captures using a particular section of the screen. I've recently been using 16-bit resolution rather than 32. That one change made a BIG difference in file size. I've been using almost totally the CamStudio Lossless Codec, but Terry has been doing many experiments using Xvid and is very pleased with the small file size resulting from LONG capture times. I'd think that would be worth reading through and experimenting with. I intend to do so when time permits.

This latest version has a couple of things that I use almost every time, now. For my purposes of captures I set a time for the capture to go no longer than. It's still pretty much guesswork as the file still runs over occasionally, but for my purposes I basically just "set it and forget it" (shades of Ron Popeil) while the capture proceeds but I'm working on other things.

I'd suggest you read through Terry's posts on Xvid and watch his videos on the same subject. As I said, I intend to when I've finished a few things.