I'm having problems exporting files from my library. They have been recorded fine and playback fine, but when I drag them to the Finder they are coming in with the file size I would expect, but very short durations (20 seconds or so) rather than 5-6 minutes, etc. When I play them they do not make any sound at all. what is up with this? Why is the export not working?

My export format is set to MPEG4 Audio, AAC, 44.1, 192, High, Stereo.

This is a major pain as I have already imported these files into iTunes and will now need to re-import them and clean up a mess once I get them properly exported.

Please help!

matthew

Ok, I'm pretty sure this has to do with the file being tagged with the wrong sample rate or something as I have some files that are 1-2 minutes that should be longer which sound very strange when I play them. I can send example files if you have a place to receive 10MB files.

Thanks,
matthew

If it makes any difference, some of these files were recorded from Windows Media Player and some were recorded from Real Player.

Hello matthew,
Sorry for your frustration. We're aware of some isolated issues similar to yours. Using the settings you provided, I am not abel to replicate yet. Do you have the same problem if you export directly it iTunes? What if you change the format to one of the presets? Please feel free to send any samples via e-mail to help@ambrosiasw.com. Thanks

Evan, thanks for replying so quickly. I have sent sample files to that email address. In the process of trying to export using the standard settings I believe I have discovered how to solve my problem and I may have even figured out how it happened.

I am exporting 300+ files from WTS. I dragged them all from the library to Finder last night. When I did this both WTS and Finder locked up with the spinning beachball for quite a while. I did not see the usual export status / progress window. I believe this was due to the large number of files I was exporting. After a while the applications started responding again and the files appeared to have been exported properly, but upon closer inspection have the issue described and illustrated by the sample files.

Today, if I re-export these files they export instantaneously and have the same problem. However, if I change the export format and save then they export just fine. If I then change the export format back to the setting I originally had they still export just fine (when exporting in small numbers of files at a time - I dare not attempt exporting a large number of files at once again!). It looks like you must have an export cache in the library that is cleared when the export format is changed. The bad files that were exported last night were cached and that is why they continue to export as bad files until I change the format.

To sum up - it looks like exporting a large number of files (300 or so) from WTS at once via drag and drop to Finder is broken and clearing the internal cache and exporting smaller numbers of files at a time (I am doing up to about 20 at a time) solves the issue.

I would suggest trying this first and then if you can find the issue and fix it I would suggest doing some serious load / volume testing in all usage scenarios. An application with a library concept like WTS needs to be able to handle significant amounts of data. I have noticed flakiness in a few different cases when I try to perform operations on large amounts of data at once. Dragging 300 files to the Finder should not cause any noticeable change in behavior aside from taking a while to complete.

Another feature enhancement request I discovered while spending most of my morning fixing the mess this has created for me is that WTS needs multi-select editing like iTunes has. I should be able to select many items in the library and change the export format for all of them at once (or edit tags such as artist, album, etc) rather than needing to go into the edit window for each individual item. This feature would have saved me hours this morning while fixing my files.

Thanks for listening and I hope the info I have provided helps you to fix the bug!

Matthew

I have discovered what appears to be another bug in WTS while fixing all my files this morning. It appears that if you open the edit window, make a change, and then save while a waveform preview is still generating (even if the preview that is still generating is for a different edit window) this causes WTS to crash. I have found this by opening about 20 edit windows and as soon as they all open, changing the export format for the front most one and closing it, saying yes to the save dialog. Whenever either the front edit window or one or more of the background edit windows is still building the waveform preview WTS is crashing on me consistently.

Matthew

One more thing I am curious about is why Maximum is an option in the quality dropdown for AAC export but it changes to High when I select it? I prefer the best quality I can get so I always choose this anyway just in case, but if it isn't an option it probably shouldn't be in the dropdown.

Matthew

Ok, I know have reason to believe that this is due to issues in the released version of the software that may be fixed in the latest beta (I'm on the beta team). I installed the beta that came out this morning before I started trying your suggestion of changing the settings and it appears that this is what resolved the issue. I ended up going back to version 1.01 (the latest I found on your web site) due to a different bug in the beta and the problem reappeared even when I just export one file at a time. I can't seem to get 1.01 to export the files without this issue.

Matthew