Topic: 0-byte file recovered with additional issue.

[3000tapes]

Hey brains trust,

I've got a file issue I haven't come across before and after a quick search I couldn't find any similar problem. Nor would I really know how to search it...

Back in 2022 I recorded a 'The Hold Steady' residency in Melbourne, Australia. First and third night recordings came out fine no dramas. Second night had the dreaded 0-byte error. I didn't know how to fix at the time so I just let it be. Living on my SD card taking up 4gb of a 12gb card. Long story short, in the last few weeks I've tracked those 2 shows as well as a residency they did last year in Melbourne and I looked into recovering the file. Used the chkdsk method and recovered it in a hidden file. Booyah achieved! Used VLC to get it back to a .wav that SoundForge could recognise. Was happy as Larry because they played a bunch of unique songs at this show of all the 8 times I've seen them. Strangely though when I opened the file in my editing program of choice the 2 hour set was almost 4 hours long. Looking closer the first hour and 45 minutes are fine. But for some reason in the final track which would normally run 10 minutes or so is 90 minutes long. Can understand why the file errored...

Now, the error starts about 4 mins and the best I can describe it is that after the 4 minute mark the file plays 2 seconds of audio, then skips back 1.9 seconds. Then plays 2 seconds of audio, then skips back 1.9 seconds again and so on and so on. So very very slowly the track is advancing but it is continuously jumping back in time as it does it. I've included a short youtube link here (https://youtu.be/094UUWrPxAc) so you get the idea. The error starts at around the 15 second point in the video.

Has anyone encountered an error like this before and have any idea of how to fix it? I know that I could manually go through each 'skip' and delete but I feel that would take much more time than I have at present time. I've tried to attatch an image of the small snippet on youtube as well so you can visually see it as well.

Here's a link to the .wav of the affected song if anyone wants a closer look. It is 1.5gb in size... https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z8yt8tsdqeyauy2qxpa34/FILE0010.wav?rlkey=8d21sszh42ojfb5vljxzpjcug&dl=0

Thanks in advance. I look forward to seeing what you guys can deduce from this one.

[rocksuitcase]

No helpful ideas, BUT, could I ask what recorder you were using? This seems VERY ODD.
Keep on taping!     

[3000tapes]

No helpful ideas, BUT, could I ask what recorder you were using? This seems VERY ODD.
Keep on taping!     

Tascam DR-2D. No battery box. Mics straight into unit.

[DMLiveWiki]

Does it seem like all the audio that's supposed to be there actually is, just with the weird repetitive audio interspersed? This is so strange, it's like the device couldn't quite flush its entire buffer as it wrote to disk.

Honestly, I'd suggest also posting this on Stack Overflow. If the pattern is consistent, someone really clever there might be able to write a Python script to excise the repetitive segments and see what happens.

[3000tapes]

Yeah all the audio is there. Have skipped forward throughout and nothing seems to be missing.

[rastasean]

You mention VLC and soundforge. Which application are you using to play the video and where you're noticing the issues?

[rocksuitcase]

Does it seem like all the audio that's supposed to be there actually is, just with the weird repetitive audio interspersed? This is so strange, it's like the device couldn't quite flush its entire buffer as it wrote to disk.

Honestly, I'd suggest also posting this on Stack Overflow. If the pattern is consistent, someone really clever there might be able to write a Python script to excise the repetitive segments and see what happens.

Also, maybe send a comment/issue report to Tascam?

[Andrea82]

Hello, I've had the same issue here in Italy with my Tascam DR-2d.
I've stored the files waiting for a future solution.. .