Combining Large Numbers Of Tracks In Ss3

[streaml1ne]

We ran into a problem at work a few days ago where we had a MD74 come back from the field with about 160 Hi-LP tracks recorded on it that needed to be uploaded and combined. The upload proceeded fine (shocker ), but the combine failed miserably. The progress bar sat at 0% and occasionally blinked a time remaining that never decremented. We waited about half an hour in this state before killing SS3 only to find that on restart it marked about 90 of the tracks black in the library viewer (DRM for them went bye bye). The remaining tracks were intact, but we couldn't play, combine, or whatever the first 90-something. We ultimately had to do a realtime record to get the event back. Long and short of it, large combines might fail miserably. Better to do it in batches of 20-30.

[Christopher]

Couldn't this be more or less related to the hardware [computer] itself? What kind of computer was this attempted on [full specs, please]?

[ozpeter]

Isn't this a hard-work way of doing it anyway? Especially if you are in the pro arena. Once the tracks are converted to wave format, you could use a program like Adobe Audition (and there are doubtless other choices, but that's the one I use) to 'open append' the files in one go. In Audition, you end up with one big file with cue markers where the MD tracks were originally. Very quick, very safe.

[streaml1ne]

Couldn't this be more or less related to the hardware [computer] itself? What kind of computer was this attempted on [full specs, please]?

←

The computer had no issues working with Sonic Stage prior doing all these operations on smaller file sets, SS definitely wedged. It's not a slow computer or anything like that, no virii, etc.

[zerodB]

I would recommend freeing tracks from SonicStage by converting to WAV (either thru Marc's program, or the built-in wave conveter in SS 3.x) when any editing operations are required - even if they are just simple combine/divide operations. SS has it's funny issues with DRM anyway - and besides - it's just a safer option. Not an ideal solution, I know, but far safer.

[MAVickers]

We ran into a problem at work a few days ago where we had a MD74 come back from the field with about 160 Hi-LP tracks recorded on it that needed to be uploaded and combined. The upload proceeded fine (shocker  ), but the combine failed miserably.

←

I know this cat is already out of the bag, but I'll never trust SonicSuck to do the track combine for me again. I delete all the track marks directly on the unit itself before uploading -- even if there are 160+ tracks

[fredthesecond]

Given the above experiences, what are your software recommendations for uploading a disk full of 240+ LP2 line in recorded tracks (totalling 80 minutes) to my Win2k SP4 computer for combine/divide operations and then distributing resulting tracks onto two further disks.

Is it safer to audition and edit directly with the recorder which may take hours I fear? I can't believe there's not a safe software method to provide this operation.

Thanks.

Edited April 26, 2005 by fredthesecond

[ozpeter]

I've just this minute come across a freeware program called "mediajoin" which will very neatly join transferred files into a single file (creating a new one, not messing with your originals) - I've tested it against the same function in Adobe Audition and the result is bit-for-bit identical. The program will also convert to ogg, wma, or mp3 while it's doing the join. Simple interface, only hitch is that there's no "sort by name" function to get around the odd thing Windows does when opening multiple files, so you have to do a little "move up, move down" of the first and / or last files to ensure the order is correct.

No, I don't know whether there are any nasties in the download but my PC hasn't crashed so far... Google will find it.

[edit - if you drag the files into Mediajoin they will stay in the correct order. The more I play with this little program the more it seems like an ideal companion to SonicStage when dealing with files recorded live that need joining together]

Edited April 26, 2005 by ozpeter

[A440]

Here's a link: the MediaJoin freeware is on the left side of the page.

http://www.audiovideosoft.com/

[ozpeter]

Oh dear... when testing results comparing Mediajoin against Adobe Audition, I fear I have come across a nasty bug with either SonicStage 3.0 or the NH900.

In essence, I can detect that where the NH900 inserted its own track markers, there is a short but (sometimes) audible repeat of a tiny bit of the waveform where the original file was Hi-SP and SS3.0 has converted to wave format.

Looking at the waveform very closely, the repeated section either side of where the track marker was is clearly visible. The length of the repeat is 13967 samples, about 0.3 seconds. Note that the result is identical whether using Audition or Mediajoin to combine the files, so the problem is very unlikely to be related to the non-Sony combine operation.

I seem to be able to spot this when the signal is very quiet - most noticable where the NH900 was left running after a rehearsal and there were some people talking quietly on stage, triggering the auto track mark fairly frequently.

Is this a known problem?

[bedtime here now, but in the morning I shall return to this problem and see if I can pin down exactly what is happening - now that I know what to look for I am seeing these repeated samples at MD track markers in other transferred material.]

[fredthesecond]

Thanks for all your efforts. I look forward to seeing the results.

Fred

[ozpeter]

Well, I've looked with extreme care at this and it seems quite clear that when SonicStage transfers tracks, at the beginning of track two there is a tiny bit of the end of track one, at the beginning of track three there is a tiny bit of the end of track two, and so forth. The repeated amounts seem to vary. In a few cases I can't actually spot the repeated bit, so either it's too few samples to see, or there is no repeat. However at one such point there is a clear distortion of the waveform at a track join with an audible click, and I suspect there is actually some material missing there, rather than duplicated.

I've re-explored whether Total Recorder (recording while SonicStage plays) does any better, but it seems to be losing a little material at each track join - generally the opposite problem.

At the points where I can hear the tiny repeat in the transferred version, comparing with analog playback direct on the MD, it seems fine there - in other words, the problem arises during the transfer, not during the original recording, which would tend to indicate that taking the track marks out on the original recording would fix the problem, though that's a pretty tedious exercise.

Of course there's plenty of variables left to explore. Does this only happen in respect of tracks added automatically when recording via Line In MD? Does it happen with manually added track marks? If you erase the track marks prior to transfer, does that indeed avoid the problem? Does this only happen with Hi-SP transfers or would wave format recordings avoid it?

It would certainly seem wise if manually track marking to do so at non-critical points.

Where the tracks are automatically created, they seem to lie at points just before the rise in level which triggers them, rather than right on the rise, and therefore the repeated sections are in low-level areas and thus tend to be not obvious, fortunately. However, purists may wish to take note of this problem, and consider whether they need to check very carefully at points where transferred live tracks join.

Oh, and another thing - with SS3.0, when you transfer unlabelled tracks direct to wave format, there is a problem in the labelling scheme, because the date and time of the transfer does not start in the format "2005-04-26 23_22(0) as it should for proper sorting of the files - the (0) is omitted, although (1) and (2) etc do appear. Rather than label all the tracks on the MD, it's quicker to go through the transferred wave files adding the "(0)" where necessary. Then they sort in the correct order for combining with other software.

[fredthesecond]

Thanks. I'll have to have an experiment with this transfer myself to see whether this might cause problems for me.

Fred

[Top Cat]

Well, I've looked with extreme care at this and it seems quite clear that when SonicStage transfers tracks, at the beginning of track two there is a tiny bit of the end of track one,

So what do we do with the repeats?

Not a problem to manually edit out when the number of splits is moderate, but what if it's a few hundreds?

Any ideas on automation?