Taperssection.com

Gear / Technical Help => Ask The Tapers => Topic started by: capnhook on August 03, 2019, 12:16:40 PM

Title: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: capnhook on August 03, 2019, 12:16:40 PM
I sent my girlfriend apprentice taper out to a show last evening, and she got a SBD copy on USB from one of those niiiice X32 Behringer mixers.  Great.

Problem is, the sound engineer probably didn't finalize the .wav file and end the recording gracefully.  I'd guess he just pulled the USB out before hitting "STOP".

I have another one of those "zero byte .wav files".

billydee here on ts gave me something called "Sandisk RescuePRO Deluxe" a while ago, when I had this same problem.

Went to use it today, but the license expired.


I could probably start with "chkdsk", but there might be a better solution now?

Looking for you'all's suggestions..










Oh and by the way, Brenda got AUD, too.  Good job baby, first time out.

Who says we're a dying breed?  :love:




OH, and SHOUTOUT to billydee, live webcasting this weekend..

Rhythms on the Rio festival in South Fork CO, starting today at 12:15pm MDT.

http://mixlr.com/billydee/events/

***SATURDAY August 3rd***
- 12:15pm Shaky Hand String Band
- 1:45pm Woodbelly
- 3:15pm Pixie and the Partygrass Boys
- 5:00pm Larry Keel Experience (w Jeremy Garrett and Kyle Tuttle)
- 6:30pm The Travelin McCoury's
- 7:45pm The Grateful Ball (w The Travelin McCoury's & Friends)
- 9:15pm Fruition

Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: buckster on August 03, 2019, 12:32:21 PM
Been there; done that.  I pass this along to anyone dealing with a Zero byte wav file issue.  Totally works:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lw5zBkoWAg8

Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: capnhook on August 03, 2019, 12:41:52 PM
!!

+T buckster
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: goodcooker on August 03, 2019, 01:16:28 PM

I've had some success by just opening the file in CD Wave Editor and when it asks if you want to overwrite the corrupt header with a new one you just click yes and save the file.

doesn't always work but when it does it's super easy.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: capnhook on August 03, 2019, 01:38:31 PM
Yep, when the video talked about using VLC player, I took a left turn and opened the recovered file in CD Wave, instead.

Saved it as a 24 bit 48kHz .wav perfectly.

Thanks for the help, I'm bookmarking this.





OH, and apologies our engineer last night.  I guess 0 byte files happen on Behringer equipment, whether you are careful or not.

Learned something today.

TS rules.  :cheers:
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: buckster on August 04, 2019, 03:44:07 PM
Yep, when the video talked about using VLC player, I took a left turn and opened the recovered file in CD Wave, instead.

Saved it as a 24 bit 48kHz .wav perfectly.

That's good to know.  VLC only saves as 16 bit 44.1.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: DavidPuddy on October 27, 2021, 09:20:46 AM
I was able to grab a sbd recording on my USB drive last night, but one of the two files is zero byte. Can anyone help with this? I'm on mac so this doesn't work.

This was on a Midas m32 btw
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: rigpimp on October 27, 2021, 12:12:44 PM
In the future, if that CD Wave trick doesn't work search the board for fixwav.  It is a homegrown utility compiled by a user here.  You just need to know the resolution of the recording and how many channels.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: if_then_else on November 09, 2021, 03:05:27 AM
First night back in action and despite my best efforts I have a zero byte file issue.
Using a recovery program I managed to get CHK files of the sizes the missing files should be. 
They are on my gdrive  for anyone who might be able to help
  the bizare thing is as soon as I opened the files foobar started playing them fine,  I tried to copy off the sd card and then shit went haywire.  1/2 of the files copied perfectly no issues but the larger portions are whats missing. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1MTUk69_buDvxPhfAEpBiezTaTiV5mTJF?usp=sharing

I've tried a bunch of stuff in this thread but no dice thus far and Im afraid  in my upset state I might make a mistake further lessening my chance of recovery. 
I've tried simply renaming the chk files to wav and that works but the files arent playable

Please any tech guys  have mercy on my poor soul and help restore these.
If anyone can help  i'm happy to make it worth your while.

What were the original bit and sample rate values of your recording?
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: Gordon on November 09, 2021, 08:20:03 AM
I was able to grab a sbd recording on my USB drive last night, but one of the two files is zero byte. Can anyone help with this? I'm on mac so this doesn't work.

This was on a Midas m32 btw

I can try the cd wave thing....
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 11, 2021, 02:33:34 AM
Got to deal with this.  As the second set of the Bruce Cockburn show ended I see my recorder has a file error message on the screen.  I checked midway through the set and everything was fine.  4GB left on the card so no idea how or why it happened.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: morst on December 11, 2021, 02:09:33 PM
I have had great success with the free version of ZAR, but it only runs on windows
https://www.z-a-recovery.com/download.aspx
Suggest using a machine with windows to do this...


Or here's the Lexar Data Safe recovery software for either Mac or PC
https://www.lexar.com/download_cat/recovery_tool-en-gb/
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 11, 2021, 04:52:19 PM
No luck so far.  The fixwav program which I used years ago doesn't run under Windows 10.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: buckster on December 13, 2021, 12:58:43 PM
No luck so far.  The fixwav program which I used years ago doesn't run under Windows 10.
So no luck with the steps enumerated in that YouTube video posted above??  It's a little long winded, but the steps are pretty straight forward.  I have them written down and just recently had to fix a zero byte file and did so successfully on Win 10.  One substitution in the steps is to use CD Wave Editor instead of VLC Media Player. 
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 13, 2021, 03:19:10 PM
Tried that and a few other things but no luck.  Luckily another source but disappointing.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: rigpimp on December 13, 2021, 04:51:16 PM
If there is a file on the card back it up and host it for others to try. 
If there is no file on the card then try Recuva. https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 13, 2021, 05:02:57 PM
Tried Recuva and shows 0 byte file but nothing more.  Only files on the card are the other Wav files.  Not finding anything hidden.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: rigpimp on December 13, 2021, 05:18:40 PM
Tried Recuva and shows 0 byte file but nothing more.  Only files on the card are the other Wav files.  Not finding anything hidden.

Sounds like the recorder errored out while recording, most likely shortly after starting.  Boo, hiss.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 13, 2021, 05:23:53 PM
I checked about 45 minutes into the set and the red record light was on and 20 minutes later it ended with red light flashing and a file error message.  Couldn't do anything but turn off recorder by removing batteries. 
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: if_then_else on December 14, 2021, 02:05:47 AM
Can you create an img file of your SD card (e.g. using a low level copy tool like dd on Linux/UNIX) and send me the file along with the information about the original bit depth, sample rate and the number of channels? I've tried out a couple of different tools on Linux and Windows recently and chances are that at least one of them might work.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: daspyknows on December 14, 2021, 02:47:20 AM
Can you create an img file of your SD card (e.g. using a low level copy tool like dd on Linux/UNIX) and send me the file along with the information about the original bit depth, sample rate and the number of channels? I've tried out a couple of different tools on Linux and Windows recently and chances are that at least one of them might work.

Sure.  Thx.  Will do that tomorrow.
Title: Re: Zero byte .wav file - how to restore?
Post by: if_then_else on December 15, 2021, 10:58:59 AM
@daspy:

After having fixed the PCM-WAV header, it seems that after 4'55'' there is data corruption.

In other words, playback isn't stalling (as originally suspected by me) but the recorder appears to have recorded the same sample multiple times to the SD card. Which would explain why the file is so big (4.2 GiB).

It's exactly the same picture when I try to load the RAW file into Samplitude.

Cf. the screenshots below. Do you still want me to send you the WAV or FLAC file with the fixed header even though the problem is a lot more fundamental?