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S4 creating WAV and WMA files LARGER than ORIGINAL MP3 Files! How to TURN THIS OFF?


Orville

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I noticed this and personally I don't like it, S4 creates a WAV file from the MP3 file you loaded for use.  A WAV file is NOT the same as an MP3, they may not play in the same volume level, I edit my MP3 files and use an audio program to level each MP3 so it's the SAME VOLUME or very close to it.  I have noticed that S4 will NOT use the MP3 volume leveling when converted to a WAV file.   I have these created WAV files and they are many times double the volume of the original MP3 file I used to create the sequence.

Not only that, WAV files end up usually LARGER than the original MP3 file, so they end up eating up additional HD space, and some of us can't afford to be giving DUPLICATE space to a file that may be twice the size or larger from the original MP3 file we THOUGHT was being used.

Is there any way to PREVENT S4 from creating these WAV files?

 

I have an MP3 file, size is 3.05 MB, the WAV file that S4 created is 22.4 MB, and it also created an WMA file as well at 5.14 MB to me that looks like the WAV file is just over 7 times the size of the MP3 file and the WMA file is almost twice the size of the MP3!  The SE should use the MP3 file throughout the entire operation, if the MP3 is used in the show, it should be the same thing used in the SE, the MP3 file.

I don't understand why this was changed, and if it wasn't for reading about another users issue with S5 about some audio issues they were having, I would not have realized that this MP3 to WAV AND WMA conversion was happening.  That and I was wondering why all of a sudden I'm getting LOW DISK SPACE warnings for my HD, and this is the culprit causing it.  This needs to be able to be turned off and/or allow the end user to select whether or not they wish to use this method.   I can NOT use S5, S4 is as high as I can go on my current system, but I may have to go even further backward to S3, if this can't be turned off in S4.   I tried deleting the stupid WAV files and S4 SE just recreates them again when the sequence is loaded again.    There needs to be a way of stopping this from occurring!

WAV and WMA directory is now at: 1.03 GB!  The MP3 files take up less than 400 MB.    There needs to be a way to TURN THIS OFF!

 

See screen capture below of properties for the MP3 file on left and WAV file on right.  I can't afford to allow programs to just create files on their own and eat up drive space like this.

 

MP3 and WAV Size Comparison.JPG

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Don it doesn't matter if it's checked or unchecked.  

I wanted to see what that option did, so I checked it off, okay uses the WAV file from what I read about it in the other thread, HOWEVER, even if the use internal media is NOT checked, it still creates 3 files, WAV, WMA and the lpx file in the same directory, the lpx file used to be created in the same directory as the MP3, not any longer.   The only files I do not want it creating are the WAV or WMA files and I have yet to find a way of preventing the SE in S4 to keep from doing so! :(

 

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Yep, they do reappear, when you load a sequence , they re-create during the period when the  "analysing" pop up shows up. Been around for many years.

 Storage is cheap. Just pretend they don't exist.

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Didn't recreate on one machine, but it did the other. Maybe the other machine is putting them in a different directory. 

Don't know. Don't care. :) Storage is cheap. I honestly wouldn't worry about them.

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I DO have to worry about them, they are eating up anywhere from 3 to 7+ times the real estate the MP3 tiles use and that, too me anyway, IS FAR TOO EXCESSIVE. 

This is the dedicated computer for my shows and it is also a computer when shows aren't running, it is used for video and audio stuff.   Those WAV files are just too big and my HD isn't one I can just replace that easily, it's only a 350GB drive and I have it divided into two drives so the LOR stuff is one its own drive and area.  I have a 2nd drive of 330 GB that is where I keep important back up info and video work stuff, again, when a show isn't not in use.   From Thanksgiving until around Jan 6, the show computer is strictly dedicated to shows and other work is done on my even OLDER computer that doesn't have near the HD capacity this machine does.

So when it creates these files, it's eating up space I can't afford to give it.   Don't know why it recreates these files, but think it's downright ridiculous that this IS the DEFAULT and NOT AN OPTION, as it is it should be AN OPTION that can be turned off or stopped.

I just can't go out and buy a new larger HD for the machine and I doubt this machine could even handle anything larger than the capacity it has now HD wise.   So yes, IT IS A PROBLEM and it's a HUGE problem at that.  I really wish I didn't have to worry about them, but I do in my case.   

If I were to convert every sequence I ever made from when I started to now in S4, I'd be out of working space in no time because of this.   Already keep getting Hard Disk space running low errors and there's nothing to clean up EXCEPT the WAV and WMA files!  But it keeps recreating them, very annoying to have to constantly deal with this problem, especially when I should not have too!

 

 

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As with all of our internal files, there is a reason they are being created.

The WAV files are used internally for things like Beat Detection/etc.  They have been created since S3 (3.10.0 -> http://www.lightorama.com/help/whats_new.htm#3-10-0).  3.10.0 was released in June of 2013 - more than 5 years ago.

You can not stop them from being created as they are used internally and are required to make things run.  If you delete them, they are re-created.

70 minutes of audio should be around 640MB,  as wave files.  Just 5% of your drive (17.5GB) should be able to support 32 hours of WAV audio.

if your computer is low on space, I don't think the WAV files are the issue.  Instead, I would install and use https://windirstat.net/ .  I use this a lot to see exactly what is taking the space on my drives.  You may find what is really the space hog.

I can send you a file which should turn off the production of those files, HOWEVER you will loose a lot of functionality in all programs of the suite including Sequence Editor, Pixel Editor and Superstar.  Those include beat detection, wave file display, MP3VBR recoding, etc.  If you would like the patch, please open a help desk ticket.

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Mike, Is it not true, that if you have a dedicated show machine on which you never ( or rarely) open a sequence in SE, that they will either not be needed or never created. or both.

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4 minutes ago, PhilMassey said:

Mike, Is it not true, that if you have a dedicated show machine on which you never ( or rarely) open a sequence in SE, that they will either not be needed or never created. or both.

Off hand, YES I believe that to be true.  However I would need to go verify that in the code since I wrote it 5 years ago and don't remember.

It would not have made sense to me back then to re-create those files in Show Player or anywhere else other than the editor.  I'm 99.9% sure they do NOT get created if all you do is run a sequence from show player.  However as soon as you do open them in SE they would be created.

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I can see your dilemma...  When allocation a "small" amount of disk space for LOR use, this decision to store required work files rather than delaying the user experience to re-create them every time a sequence is opened can be an issue.  As has been mentioned, the files are being used by the software at some point so they are not optional and have been this way for many, many years.

The question of why not optionally delete/cleanup the files when a sequence is closed is a good one. I believe that the answer is that it was considered unnecessary because an average user would be loosing a couple GB of space which is not generally considered significant on modern machines. Even a user with a couple hundred songs would be using, on average, less than 10GB of extra storage which again,  on most machines would not be an issue. 

However in your case I can see that by partitioning off an relatively small area for LOR  ( which would be more than sufficient if it were not for these extra files that are created ), that with this can be a frustrating issue. 

As mentioned the files are only used by the sequence editor and only when the sequence is being played. Turn off waveform as default and when you open the files the extra files will not be created. They will only be created when the waveform is displayed or the sequence is played in the Sequence Editor. They will not be created when the Show Player is playing the sequence in a show. 

For now I think the best you can do is occasionally delete the contents of the folder with the wav and wma files. But this should not be required very often. The files must be created to work with a sequence in the Sequence Editor but we will look into the effort required to add an option to delete the files when the sequence is closed. 

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EDIT NOTE: Dan I went from S3.8.2 to S4 this year in 2018.  So it seems from DevMikes reply this started in 3.10.0, since I never used that version, so I was not aware of this, and apparently the version I was using did not do this?

Thanks Dan, but I always searched my drive for WAV files and I never, not once found any created by the SE in the S3 version when I'd go looking for a specific WAV file that I would have to create for another program I have that uses specifically WAV PCM files.   I never found WAV files that matched any of my MP3's except for those I converted and had in a special folder for a single use, then after I created the program that used the WAV internally and all was set to go, deleted the WAV that was no longer needed.

But the WAV files here in S4 is the first time I ever found actual WAV files with the same names as the MP3 I used to create it in the SE, the .LPX files used to always be UNDER the MP3 file, if I had a song named: Meowing Jingle Bells.MP3, I'd get a file called Meowing Jingle Bells.lpx in the same directory as the MP3.  This actually helped me more because I knew which MP3 files HAD been used for a sequence, and those that didn't have that additional .lpx file could be deleted from that directory.   It helped me keep only one instance of the MP3 I used for a sequence, and if I used it again, it would be picked up from that same directory again.  But the way it is now, I may delete the wrong MP3 files if I tried using this method I've been using for years.

So I'm surprised that the SE has been doing this for years, so in the past, if I read your explanation correctly, the WAV files were created when the SE ran and then  deleted{?} after the SE was closed, and that's why I never found them hiding on my drive anywhere, I just never knew they were there!  But now that they are sticking around and the lpx file is also in that directory, in an older system with limited space this could be an issue.

A few questions remain:  What exactly is the .lpx file for?   Is it used when a show is created?   Or is that a file that can also be deleted and not affect a show?

I really don't like to delete anything that software creates for fear I may really foul something up and lose a lot of work in the process.

BTW2: one issue I have noticed is, if I edit the MP3 file I used, make it shorter and change the volume, if I don't delete the same named WAV file that the SE originally created, it will use the same volume level and length of the FIRST MP3 file I used, it won't convert the new MP3 to a lower volume or shorter WAV file, as the SE still plays the same length of music from the original.   If I delete the WAV files, turn off and then on the Waveform, the new lower volume, shorter length WAV file then gets created, but I still have to manually shorten the length of the sequence as it still plays at the same length it was initially created with the original music file.  So dead silence with lights flashing past the new ending of the music file.   Is it supposed to work like that{I change length manually} or should the sequence get auto-compensated for the new length of the song in the SE?

 

Edited by Orville
Add EDIT NOT: to top of message.
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8 hours ago, DevMike said:

As with all of our internal files, there is a reason they are being created.

The WAV files are used internally for things like Beat Detection/etc.  They have been created since S3 (3.10.0 -> http://www.lightorama.com/help/whats_new.htm#3-10-0).  3.10.0 was released in June of 2013 - more than 5 years ago.

You can not stop them from being created as they are used internally and are required to make things run.  If you delete them, they are re-created.

70 minutes of audio should be around 640MB,  as wave files.  Just 5% of your drive (17.5GB) should be able to support 32 hours of WAV audio.

if your computer is low on space, I don't think the WAV files are the issue.  Instead, I would install and use https://windirstat.net/ .  I use this a lot to see exactly what is taking the space on my drives.  You may find what is really the space hog.

I can send you a file which should turn off the production of those files, HOWEVER you will loose a lot of functionality in all programs of the suite including Sequence Editor, Pixel Editor and Superstar.  Those include beat detection, wave file display, MP3VBR recoding, etc.  If you would like the patch, please open a help desk ticket.

Mike my last version before moving to S4 was 3.8.2, so I never experienced this until this year in 2018 when I upgraded from that version to S4, tried to go S5, but my machine is too old to handle that version, can't use the PE in S4 like I had hoped because my machine can't install or even find an OpenGL 1.5 to use for it to function.

Sometimes I feel I may have wasted my money on the S4 upgrade, since if I don't want this happening at all, then I'd need to go back to 3.8.2. which I still have.

I'll pass on the patch, as I use those beat detection tools all the time.  Hopefully something else will work out and I can get this machine upgraded somehow.   For now,. I think I've found my own workaround for the issue.

BTW: Thanks for the link DevMike to that Windir program, just installed it and I'll see what I can find out from it.  So far the space hogs are #1. Photographs, which I expected that.  #2 is LOR, which I did not expect this one to be #2, maybe down around #8 to #10 or possibly a liitel further down, so was surprised that the LOR directory is listed as the 2nd most intensive drive space hog, then again, the LOR audio directory is where I keep ALL my MP3 files on my system, mainly for use with the LOR SE, so that's probably why it's in the #2 slot.  But this program is cool, really like how I can actually find out where the issues are om the hard drives!

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