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Gear / Technical Help => Recording Gear => Topic started by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 05:25:31 AM

Title: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 05:25:31 AM
Was doing a test recording last night (also checking how long battery lasts) and the battery died before I pressed stop. The problem is that the player won't play the file at all although it shows its there in the menu.

I've connected to the PC and the file is there at 1.92gb. I tried opening in winamp and it wont play, I've also tried renaming it and adding .wav just in casei t was that problem.

Still not working. Any ideas to recover this file? (the file isn't important but it seems strange how a file is broken when the battery dies as its buffers every few min, so theres gotta be something saved).

Thanks for your time.
Simon.
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 05:55:00 AM
I'm running the repair thing thats in the Iriver FAQ but can't get it working. How the hell does the command prompt work, lol?

Thanks.
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: petur on October 11, 2007, 06:14:17 AM
Run a header repair utility or import the file as RAW in any good audio tool.

Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 06:20:45 AM
Run a header repair utility or import the file as RAW in any good audio tool.



I'm trying to repair it using the repair kit linked in the FAQ guide. Problem is, I can't get the commnd prompt to find the directory.

This is the location of my file: C:\Documents and Settings\Simon\My Documents\Buggered WAV

What do I need to type in to get it working?

Thanks
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: petur on October 11, 2007, 07:28:15 AM
from the windows start-menu, select run... and type cmd and enter
Then navigate to the folder using cd (but easier: copy the file closer to the root)

* On VISTA, the run... command is hidden in accessories/system tools
* You can also install the Commandline here powertoy from microsoft so that you can right-click a folder and have commandline there: http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe (http://download.microsoft.com/download/whistler/Install/2/WXP/EN-US/CmdHerePowertoySetup.exe)

Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 07:31:04 AM

Then navigate to the folder using cd (but easier: copy the file closer to the root)



How do I do this? Sorry for sounding stupid but I rarely use the cmd. What exactly do I type in to bring up my file to repair?

Thanks!


EDIT: I'm trying to do this:

Use Kuba's nifty little wav header repair utility to generate a new header: http://www.fi.muni.cz/~xvanek4/repair/repair.zip

Once downloaded:

1) unzip the app to the same dir as your file
2) It runs from a command-line, so you'll need to get to a command prompt in windows by clicking on 'start' then 'run'.  Type 'cmd'. Click 'ok'
3) In the black window that opens, navigate to the directory your file is in.  (You change directories by typing 'cd <directory name>'). 
4) Once you're in the correct directory get the exact file size and name by typing 'dir'.
4) Now type 'Repair <filename> <filesize>'
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 07:41:12 AM
UPDATE:

Ok, I've managed to get to the stage where I'm trying to type repair followed by file name and size. Its not doing anything though...
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: petur on October 11, 2007, 11:56:33 AM
never used the tool.

Maybe it has a problem with the way you passed the filesize or maybe it doesn't output any text. Is the file ok now? Did you try?
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 12:30:45 PM
never used the tool.

Maybe it has a problem with the way you passed the filesize or maybe it doesn't output any text. Is the file ok now? Did you try?

File still won't play and it won't open in any editing programs. I tried the repair command a few times and it appears to be doing nothing...

Have you got any other suggestions of tools/programs/methods that could fix it. As I said before, this file is nothing I need, but I would like to be able to fix it so I know and can fix files in the future *if* my batt dies during recording (I hope it never happens though).

Thanks.
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: pontiacb on October 11, 2007, 02:08:40 PM
Hi,

I've had the same thing happen a couple of times to me when my iriver has frozen (when I was using an old Rockbox build, doesn't happen any more).  I know you say it won't open in any audio editing software, but have you tried Audacity then File>Import>Raw data?  This worked for me both times without having to repair headers and I know that someone else has recently used it to 'save' a show.

Edit:  I should add that I'm assuming that you can successfully copy the file to your PC.  If you can't, then that's a different problem and could be to do with a hard drive problem on the iriver - I've had this problem as well and had to run chkdsk in repair mode to recover the file.  I've now always split files into manageable sizes when recording using Rockbox's automatic split file size feature (I use 512 MB splits ) to avoid dealing with large file transfers -  the files are seamless and can simply be joined using shntool. 
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: cgrooves on October 11, 2007, 02:20:10 PM
I've tried to repair a file using the recommendation in the FAQ before as well, and had no luck.  I ended up fixing the file by opening it with some free audio software (goldwav, I believe) and saving it as a wav.  It worked great after doing that.  Give up on that FAQ suggestion and use some type of audio software.
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: petur on October 11, 2007, 03:11:36 PM
some commandline tools have difficulties when there are spaces in the path (the name 'Documents and Settings' is one big mistake from Microsoft as it doesn't work very well with their hacked together support for spaces in names)

Other than that, in case of troubles I *always* use raw import... I always use Audacity
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 11, 2007, 03:23:53 PM
Thanks once again for the replies. Just to say:

I can copy the file across fine with no probs. I'm using a recent build of Rockbox (I installed it around june/july). I've tried opening the file in Adobe Audition and it just fails and automatically shuts down the program. I'll definately try Audacity and report back if successful or not.

Thanks, +t to everyone.
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: petur on October 12, 2007, 03:24:49 AM
I'm using a recent build of Rockbox (I installed it around june/july).

Don't post that on the rockbox site, june/july is considered very old, last weeks build is considered old :)

I've tried opening the file in Adobe Audition and it just fails and automatically shuts down the program. I'll definately try Audacity and report back if successful or not.

You have to import it as raw data, not just open it as WAV! The applications _should_ ask you about sample-rates and bits-per-sample!
Title: Re: Broken/Corrupted file on h120.....
Post by: Liquid Drum on October 12, 2007, 05:41:24 AM
I'm using a recent build of Rockbox (I installed it around june/july).

Don't post that on the rockbox site, june/july is considered very old, last weeks build is considered old :)

I've tried opening the file in Adobe Audition and it just fails and automatically shuts down the program. I'll definately try Audacity and report back if successful or not.

You have to import it as raw data, not just open it as WAV! The applications _should_ ask you about sample-rates and bits-per-sample!

Heh. Anyways I opened it in Audacity as RAW and it worked!

Thanks for your time, appreciated as always.