error of cyclic redundancy on BIG sound recording program : savingfail offently !

[VanguardLH]

3 of this about 4000 files have problems, so the WHOLE save crashes.

So what does the program save? If it is collection thousands of small
audio files, what does the "Save" function do? Merge them all into one
audio file? If so, it seems you could either use backup or snapshot
software to make sure you have a copy of all those audio files before
you do a save. If the save fails, you can restore and try again. Or
you could use other software to do the file merge. I'm sure the
alt.comp.freeware newsgroup could come up with something that would walk
through every audio file in a folder to merge their contents into a
larger audio file. I use FormatFactory but it isn't usable with such a
large number of files. You almost need something that runs as a batch
processor: gets a list of files and then appends them one at a time into
a larger audio file. The reason I mention a batch processor is to allow
the program to skip over bad audio files. If 3 are corrupted,
unreadable, or incorrectly formatted or truncated (at the beginning)
then something that processes one file at a time could skip a bad file
and keep going onto the rest to append them.

If it's just the Save function that fails and if the Save merely merges
all the small audio files, there are other and probably newer and better
maintained merge utilities you could use. Instead of hitting Save in
LoopRecorder, you'd click a shortcut you put in a toolbar in the Windows
taskbar on on the desktop to run the audio merge batch processor
utility. The audio merge program would probably also do the conversion
between filetypes (i.e., .wav to .mp3 or whatever you want).

I'd say, if nothing else works, to replace their Save function with your
own (with an external program that does the same thing). I could
probably come up with a batch (.bat) file using a for-loop and an audio
merge program with a CLI (command-line interface) where it traversed
through a list of the files in a specified folder to merge them one at a
time to a larger audio file (and in a different audio format). If a
particular source audio couldn't be read or the merge failed then the
for-loop would skip it and move onto the next file in the list. I just
figure there's already something out there, and probably free, that
could walk through all files in a specified folder to merge them
together while skipping those that caused errors.

I use 15 hours loop segments, sometimes 20.

So the program still generates thousands of small audio files despite
you telling it to create a "loop" of 15 hours. Boobs! They don't honor
your configuration.

Thet replied me this day ! I send them back my .. sadness and
misanderstood. Wait and see.


Erm, lets say we use a "special" trial pro version. Thats usually the
way people do to fully test progs and see if it worth to buy it. But
we also used the official Trial Pro Version, that is crashing the
same way, if you use big time loops (5 hours and more)

So you never paid for the program and are still running the trial
version (which much be a non-expiring trial version for you to be using
it for years)? I thought you said you paid around 200 euro for this
software.

???

to hide their

but they give their 2 names, so ??

If the contact info they provide on their web site is viable then there
is no reason to hide who they are in their domain registration.

The typical excuse I hear about hiding the registrant in the WhoIs info
for a domain registration is to avoid getting spammed by other
registrars begging you to switch to their service (these typically
showing up near the expiration for the domain). Geez, like these
registrants can't use free e-mail accounts with filters that block or
discard all e-mails that don't originate from the current registrar, uh
huh, sure.

Another possibility for a registrant to be hidden is that they really
didn't register their own domain or they get a very special price with a
webhoster. The company isn't running their own web server. They aren't
using an enterprise or company-level web service. They are using a
cheap webhoster to host their web site and they get a courtesy domain
from that webhoster. The webhoster owns the courtesy domain so they get
listed as its owner. So the company isn't expressly hiding but neither
are they operating their own web server or managing one hosted elsewhere
and they didn't even register their own domain (so they own it) to be
hosted by them or elsewhere. They got a courtesy domain during their
stay at a webhoster and they'll lose that courtesy domain if and when
they leave that webhoster (unless the webhoster offers to sell it to
them when they leave).

In the Internet, little companies and home-based businesses can look
just as big as the big companies. You don't know if you're dealing with
a Fortune 500 type of business or some guy in his basement den.

 

[VanguardLH]

We use Pro Version.
The prog seems just unfinished : on June 30 2012 its marked on the
website "better performance under Windows 98SE and ME "
I take it as a very bad joke.

I'd take it as the software doesn't support later versions of Windows.
NTFS would not have been contemplated nor would changes in the system
API. There were old games that ran okay that I had to dump when I moved
from a 9x-based Windows to an NT-based Windows. I hunted around but
never saw where they mentioned any system requirements.

When you look in the folder where the program was installed and sort by
date, what's the datestamp on the newest *program* file (that isn't a
config file that would get modified when you change config settings)?

The prog has some features that are indeed totally out of date, so thats
a sign of something strange ( for a 200 euros program, its not fair).

Sorry, but vertical market software is always expensive. They have less
customers across which to spread their costs to develop and test, plus
they have less competition to push down the price.

It's possible you are still using old but unsupported software. They
don't specify any terms regarding their responsibility for support on
their web site. Perhaps a EULA or contract included in the sale defines
their responsibilities. Lots of software continues to sell long after
any development on it has ceased.

Even when the app is crashing, the orthagraphic of the message is wrong,
they forget a letter in the word, so you really have the impression its
not serious - in the same time you understand that your recording is
just LOST.

QA'ed a product once that had an error something like, "Sorry, the
program has keeled over and died with all 4 legs in the air." There was
no handler for an error and this was the fall-through case. The bug got
reported to catch the error and the fall-through error message got
changed to be more professional and informative. The programmer thought
the fall-through case would never be reached. "He don't know me vewy
well, do he" (ala Bugs Bunny; http://tinyurl.com/75cz4mq for audio).
They make, I break. That's the fun part of QA.

If the progs needs very special monitoring of hard disk for not to fail
everytime, they should say it in BIG LETTERS, the biggest possible
letters. That should even be updated and implemented in the prog.

Wouldn't that apply to every program that creates and modifies data
files? Corruption of data files would affect us of Microsoft Excel,
SQL, or any program relying on the integrity of its data files.

I cannot believe one second the NASA can trust such an app ...

"One of our customers is NASA." Well, "is" might actually be "was". Or
"is" means NASA is using it on Win98. They may have sold only 1 copy to
NASA but they have no information to know that NASA is still using it.
How would they, for example, know you are still using their software?
All they have is their customer list from the info you provide when you
purchase the software. I've purchased lots of software over the decades
that I've long abandoned, and some of which didn't survive long at all
because it didn't work or meet my criteria or I found something better.

When you see lists of big customers or awards on a site, check them out.
Without corroboting evidence by those customers (at their sites, blogs,
or somewhere OTHER than the software site citing those customers), there
is no proof that those customers are still customers or to what degree
they were customers. For their claimed awards, go check the site they
claim is giving them an award. Some awards are really old. Some are at
garbage sites where the author was bribed to give an award so they could
get a free copy of the software. In fact, some award sites are ran by
the software producer to pretend they are someone else giving the award
(the software author is giving themself an award). Also, NASA still
uses some r-e-a-l-l-y old stuff.

As for their claimed "awards", some are nothing more than a blurb at a
download site. Noob reporters have to produce or they get fired. They
produce "awards" like the one referenced at
http://www.pcwelt.de/downloads/Loop-Recorder-590339.html. That's not an
award. That's a [very short] description! Obviously a download site
has to tell you something about the download they host. Then notice the
low rating for the product by *users*. The editor's rating may be
useless (use their description to see if they even installed the product
to see it in action or just puked out the sale blurb given to them by
the software author). Some of the "award" sites don't exist anymore or
got merged somewhere else (e.g., shareware.com became part of CNet's
download site - who don't list looprecorder anymore). For all the
"awards" they list, some you can't see unless you register (but that
doesn't mean the product is still described there), some are obvious
that the so-called editor never installed the product but just describe
it by what they were told, and none of them are actual awards for
product excellence but just descriptions for downloads. Their awards
are user or editor ratings. Where there were user ratings, they were
low (2 out of 5 stars). The editor ratings were all bogus as they
typically are at download sites.

Many of such "award" sites are merely used to provide newer dated links
in searches to pretend a product is still supported, still viable, and
current. A search that shows some bogus editor puking out a sales blurb
given to them by the software author that is dated in the last year
misleads users doing searches into thinking that's when the product was
updated or makes them believe the product is current.

To me, their list of fake "awards" would have me looking elsewhere for a
solution.

http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Loop-Recorder-Changelog-11438.html
shows a changelop of the product (which is really when it got submitted
to Softpedia for them to provide a download or link to the product).
Since it mentions Windows 7 fixes, it does seem the product is getting
some development work done on it. I also see at the product's web site
(http://www.looprecorder.de/download.php) that they list versions of
Windows later than the Windows 98/ME that you stated above. Finally I
found their system requirements listing at:

http://www.looprecorder.de/sysrequirements.php

I have to wonder if this is an old 16-bit application. Those run in an
emulation layer and typically as threads all under the same emulation
layer. If one crashes, it takes the others out. For more info, read
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff756590.aspx. I don't know
what else you have running on your host plus you have not yet revealed
what version of Windows on which you are running LoopRecorder Pro.
Maybe following the advice to run each 16-bit app in its own address
space would prevent corruption of LoopRecorder by some other oldie
16-bit app you are also running on the same host.

(BTW: 16-bit apps won't install or run on 64-bit versions of Win7. For
that, you need something like DosBox.)

 

[VanguardLH]

I'd say, if nothing else works, to replace their Save function with your
own (with an external program that does the same thing).

For example (I haven't use this free program):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonkenc/

To merge all the files into one big file, load (select) the files into
the joblist and select the "encode to single file" checkbox. Then start
encoding into the one output file. From posts in their forums there,
all the input files must all be at the same sampling rate and sample
resolution (which means you cannot mix mono and stereo). So if the
input files are different audio formats (not likely since they are being
produced by the same program, LoopRecorder), you might have to do 2
passes: batch mode to convert all the files to the same format followed
by the encoding of them all into one big file. Obviously you'll need
twice the disk space since the originals still exist as you're creating
the collection file, or you could create the collection file somewhere
else, like your save/archive location.

Before trialing this product, I'd ask in their forum if the batch
operation (the "joblist") will skip over corrupted or defective source
files. You don't want to get another product that aborts collecting
4000 audio files together just because 3 of them aren't usable.

Another freebie I found was http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Features.
Users claim it can merge (concatenate or append together) a list of
audio files, do mixing, and even merge 2 mono files into a stereo file.
These are also mentioned as features on their web page. I don't know
why their Features page lists lots of audio format but their FAQ say it
outputs only Apple AIFF format. Maybe it can read all the audio formats
but only write to AIFF. If it does indeed only output AIFF then you
could use another audio converter (with a fancy GUI) to convert the big
file into a different audio format. This is a command-line utility for
batch processing of audio files. Don't know if you demand a pretty GUI
for an app and don't like having to specify command-line parameters.
They show an example batch (script) file for processing multiple input
audio files and, sure enough, it uses a for-loop to walk through a list
of files. From http://sox.sourceforge.net/sox.html, you add the -m
command-line switch to concatenate audio files into one output file.
I'm assuming that you would then, in the for-loop, specify the output
file as one of the input files (i.e., you concatenate the collection
file with another source file). The for-loop would be preceeded with a
copy command to create the first version of the collection file. You
could use a company banner message to declare the content is yours, copy
that into the collection.wav file, like:

copy c:\media\ournotice.wav e:\archive\collection.wav
for %%a in (%*) do sox -m e:\archive\collection.wav %%a e:\archive\collection.wav

This will only work if the program reads all of collection.wav into a
buffer and closes that file so it can then be overwritten. There are
other tricks possible by renaming files, like using collection.wav as a
source file in the for-loop but output to newcollection.wav and then in
another command in the for-loop renaming newcollection.wav to
collection.wav. I'm not really trying to provide a usable batch script
here and am only showing that batch processing is possible. If a
particular loop in the for-loop fails because the source file isn't
usable then the sox.exe program error (aborts) but the loop proceeds to
the next iteration to append the next audio file. Unless you test the
error code returned by a program, the for-loop isn't going to stop
because one iteration produced an error.

There are other programs that can do the merge of many audio files into
one big audio file. So you don't have to rely on LoopRecorder doing
that for you since it appears to often fail. Just do the same function
outside the program.

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 6/30/2012 7:28 PM, VanguardLH a écrit :

I'd take it as the software doesn't support later versions of Windows.
NTFS would not have been contemplated nor would changes in the system
API. There were old games that ran okay that I had to dump when I moved
from a 9x-based Windows to an NT-based Windows. I hunted around but
never saw where they mentioned any system requirements.

When you look in the folder where the program was installed and sort by
date, what's the datestamp on the newest *program* file (that isn't a
config file that would get modified when you change config settings)?

Well in fact its ok, from the readme.txt :

Loop Recorder Version 2.08, Jan 2011
-Compatibility with Windows 7, 64bit
-Improved user interface
-Setup: Optionally registers existing MP3 codec

Sorry, but vertical market software is always expensive. They have less
customers across which to spread their costs to develop and test, plus
they have less competition to push down the price.

i see, ok.

It's possible you are still using old but unsupported software. They
don't specify any terms regarding their responsibility for support on
their web site. Perhaps a EULA or contract included in the sale defines
their responsibilities. Lots of software continues to sell long after
any development on it has ceased.


QA'ed a product once that had an error something like, "Sorry, the
program has keeled over and died with all 4 legs in the air."

woh, amazing ..

There was

no handler for an error and this was the fall-through case. The bug got
reported to catch the error and the fall-through error message got
changed to be more professional and informative. The programmer thought
the fall-through case would never be reached. "He don't know me vewy
well, do he" (ala Bugs Bunny; http://tinyurl.com/75cz4mq for audio).
They make, I break. That's the fun part of QA.


Wouldn't that apply to every program that creates and modifies data
files? Corruption of data files would affect us of Microsoft Excel,
SQL, or any program relying on the integrity of its data files.


"One of our customers is NASA." Well, "is" might actually be "was". Or
"is" means NASA is using it on Win98. They may have sold only 1 copy to
NASA but they have no information to know that NASA is still using it.
How would they, for example, know you are still using their software?
All they have is their customer list from the info you provide when you
purchase the software. I've purchased lots of software over the decades
that I've long abandoned, and some of which didn't survive long at all
because it didn't work or meet my criteria or I found something better.

When you see lists of big customers or awards on a site, check them out.
Without corroboting evidence by those customers (at their sites, blogs,
or somewhere OTHER than the software site citing those customers), there
is no proof that those customers are still customers or to what degree
they were customers. For their claimed awards, go check the site they
claim is giving them an award. Some awards are really old. Some are at
garbage sites where the author was bribed to give an award so they could
get a free copy of the software. In fact, some award sites are ran by
the software producer to pretend they are someone else giving the award
(the software author is giving themself an award). Also, NASA still
uses some r-e-a-l-l-y old stuff.

haah, ok

As for their claimed "awards", some are nothing more than a blurb at a
download site. Noob reporters have to produce or they get fired. They
produce "awards" like the one referenced at
http://www.pcwelt.de/downloads/Loop-Recorder-590339.html. That's not an
award. That's a [very short] description! Obviously a download site
has to tell you something about the download they host. Then notice the
low rating for the product by *users*. The editor's rating may be
useless (use their description to see if they even installed the product
to see it in action or just puked out the sale blurb given to them by
the software author). Some of the "award" sites don't exist anymore or
got merged somewhere else (e.g., shareware.com became part of CNet's
download site - who don't list looprecorder anymore). For all the
"awards" they list, some you can't see unless you register (but that
doesn't mean the product is still described there), some are obvious
that the so-called editor never installed the product but just describe
it by what they were told, and none of them are actual awards for
product excellence but just descriptions for downloads. Their awards
are user or editor ratings. Where there were user ratings, they were
low (2 out of 5 stars). The editor ratings were all bogus as they
typically are at download sites.

Many of such "award" sites are merely used to provide newer dated links
in searches to pretend a product is still supported, still viable, and
current. A search that shows some bogus editor puking out a sales blurb
given to them by the software author that is dated in the last year
misleads users doing searches into thinking that's when the product was
updated or makes them believe the product is current.

To me, their list of fake "awards" would have me looking elsewhere for a
solution.

http://www.softpedia.com/progChangelog/Loop-Recorder-Changelog-11438.html
shows a changelop of the product (which is really when it got submitted
to Softpedia for them to provide a download or link to the product).
Since it mentions Windows 7 fixes, it does seem the product is getting
some development work done on it. I also see at the product's web site
(http://www.looprecorder.de/download.php) that they list versions of
Windows later than the Windows 98/ME that you stated above. Finally I
found their system requirements listing at:

http://www.looprecorder.de/sysrequirements.php

I have to wonder if this is an old 16-bit application. Those run in an
emulation layer and typically as threads all under the same emulation
layer. If one crashes, it takes the others out. For more info, read
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/ff756590.aspx. I don't know
what else you have running on your host plus you have not yet revealed
what version of Windows on which you are running LoopRecorder Pro.

XP Pro SP3 32 bits + AMD Athlon 1.34 Ghz / 1.25 GB ram
The computer has just an audio streaming program (Eddcast Stand alone
version + icecast encoder) wich has its own soundcard.

Gift :
http://fieldmice.free.fr/Line_In.pls
http://fieldmice.free.fr/Line_In.m3u

No antivirus, no other "foreign" task running, taskmgr is always on to
check

But I still must check IRQ's to see if the cards no share IRQ with LAN
or Video. We already have disable all unwanted features in the bios ...

Maybe following the advice to run each 16-bit app in its own address
space would prevent corruption of LoopRecorder by some other oldie
16-bit app you are also running on the same host.

(BTW: 16-bit apps won't install or run on 64-bit versions of Win7. For
that, you need something like DosBox.)

Thank you for that great "support" ..
This 16 bits microsoft article is worth to be aware of ..
I'll see if we host 16 bits apps, and if the Lopp Rec is a 16 bits too
... Perhaps the old Soundblaster we use has an old driver that would run
on 16 bits ?

But as we're on XP, perhaps the MS article is not applicable in our case ..

Have good day
sorry that i cannot be more responsive, as its hard to read and answer
in english. But be sure I read the letters more than 3 times for each of
nice people here in the news !!

Julien

 

[Paul]

Have good day
sorry that i cannot be more responsive, as its hard to read and answer
in english. But be sure I read the letters more than 3 times for each of
nice people here in the news !!

Julien

I tested the non-pro version of Loop Recorder.

I set the loop size to 16 hours. (44.1K, 16 bit samples, stereo,
times 16 hours times 3600 seconds per hour, gives 10GB data pool
in uncompressed .wav format.)

The tool was set to record in .wav . That eliminates the need
for an MP3 codec. Coding to MP3 could be done, using
the Quick Save file as an input to another program.

It could be, that a bug exists in the MP3 CODEC, that only
becomes apparent when processing 10GB of data.

After waiting 16 hours, the loopdir temporary directory eventually
had 10GB of tiles in it. Each file in my case was 512KB. That's
about 20,000 files.

The program does not use much in the way of resources. Its
personal RAM usage was low, as was the percentage of CPU power
required.

I used a single disk setup. C: partition held the temporary files.
I used E: partition to hold the Quick Save output.

When I click the Quick Save button, the program stops adding
new files to the temporary directory. Yet, it continues to
actually record the audio, so nothing is lost. And the RAM
usage does not grow. So where the information is stored, is
a mystery as far as Task Manager is concerned.

The program is *very slow* at doing the Quick Save. The file operation
size is 64KB roughly. That means, to transfer and concatenate
the 20,000 files, takes roughly 160,000 head movements. If I had
used two separate physical disks, then all of the reads would have
been on one disk, and all of the writes would have been on
the other disk. Doing all of that on the one disk drive,
is a bit of stress for the head assembly.

It took many minutes to complete the Quick Save. The Performance monitor
showed maybe 10MB/sec transfer rate, or about 16 minutes to copy
all the data. And no new recorded audio was lost during that interval.

I didn't see any truncated 512KB files. Nor did the Quick Save stop
or fail along the way. It all seemed to work.

I'd agree with your suggestion, of using an SSD. That may be the
best approach, and result in a speedup in the Quick Save. I have
no way of knowing though, whether that completely eliminates
the possibility of truncated or error filled files. The nice thing
about an SSD, is some of them can do 20,000 operations per second,
so the 160,000 operations needed, wouldn't take quite as long
with the SSD drive. It just needs to be big enough to
hold the loop directory (10GB size filled with 512KB files)
plus the 10GB output wave file from the Quick Save. Add in at
least another 20GB for the OS installation, and a 40GB SSD might
just be able to handle it, if you're using an older Windows OS.
Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8 have a pretty large C: drive,
so you'd need a bigger SSD with those.

If you use that approach, I'd recommend reinstalling the OS,
installing an "AHCI" driver, and using a SSD with "TRIM" command
support. As that may do a better job of maintaining the pool
of unused space on the SSD.

One of these would do the job, without wearing out, but it's more
expensive than an SSD would be.

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=271&prod_no=ANS-9010B&type1_idno=9&ino=123

HTH,
Paul

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 6/30/2012 5:24 PM, Paul a écrit :

In terms of storage technology, there are devices like this.

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=382&prod_no=ANS-9010BA&type1_idno=5&ino=28


Price is listed as USD 339.

It would also need eight sticks of RAM. This would add greatly to the
expense.
Only DDR3 RAM now, is cheap. DDR2 RAM is more expensive, and that is the
type
used by this box.

http://dl.acard.com/download/compitibility list/ANS-9010_9010B compatible list.pdf


Such a device, you could write it as much as you want, and it would
not wear out. If such a device still has problems, then it must
be a software problem.

*******

In a hard drive, you could replace your current hard drive, with an RE4.
For example, if the computer has two disk ports, you could run two
of these in RAID 1 mirror mode. One advantage of RE4, is TLER.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136697

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TLER

"Desktop Computers and TLER Effect

Effectively, TLER and similar features limit the performance of on-drive
error handling, to allow RAID controllers to handle the error if
problematic.
In a non-RAID environment, such features are unhelpful, and manufacturers
do not recommend their use.

It is best for TLER to be "Enabled" when in a RAID array to prevent the
recovery time from a disk read or write error from exceeding the RAID
controller's timeout threshold. If a drive times out, the hard disk will
need to be manually re-added to the array, requiring a re-build and
re-synchronization of the hard disk. Enabling TLER seeks to prevent this
by interrupting error correction before timeout, to report failures only
for data segments. The result is increased reliability in a RAID array.

In a stand-alone configuration TLER should be disabled. As the drive is
not redundant, reporting segments as failed will only increase manual
intervention. Without a RAID controller to drop the disk, normal (no TLER)
recovery ability is most stable.

The WDTLER utility allows for the enabling or disabling of the TLER
parameter
in the hard disk's firmware settings allowing the user to determine the
best
setting for his particular usage as either a stand-alone or RAID drive.
This utility is written for DOS and you will require a DOS bootable disk
with this utility on it to use it."

So that would be a suggestion for a drive to use, either a pair of drives
in RAID 1 mirror, or a single drive (with TLER adjusted as appropriate).

*******

An SSD would be a good solution, especially as the write rate of your loop
program is probably not that high. The lifetime of an SSD, is a function
of the maximum write cycles (3000) times the capacity (40GB). Say, for the
sake of argument, a recording program consumes 2GB per hour of space. Then
the SSD would last 3000*40/2 = 60000 hours or about 6.8 years. Using
internal
wear leveling, the wearing of the flash is spread evenly over the address
space of the flash (so you don't "burn a hole in it").

That makes an SSD a viable solution as well.

No matter what solution you choose, keep the temperature down.

*******

Are there other ways to do it ? Yes.

This motherboard is 12" x 8" and has a G34 socket. Motherboard
costs $254 USD. The motherboard was specifically selected, to
fit in an ordinary computer case.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182230

It has room for eight sticks of RAM. Purchase four of these kits
at $60 each, to fill the DIMM slots. This gives 32GB of reliable
storage. (Work out whether this is sufficient for a full day of
recording !) This is unbuffered ECC memory, meaning even if the
memory makes a trivial error, the error can be corrected automatically
at the hardware level.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139262

Next, you need a G34 socket processor. This processor costs $270.
The heatsink fan and cooler are extra. I selected this as the
cheapest processor to run the recording machine.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105266

For a total system cost of $254 + (4 * $60) + $270, you have
32GB of reliable storage. Total cost so far $764 USD.

Add to it, this Windows program for $18.99 USD. Now our system
cost is 764+19 = $783 USD. This converts the 32GB of memory
on the motherboard, into a 31.5GB hard drive (need to leave a little
RAM for the OS). The loop files would be safe in here, as long as
the computer power remains running. The files can be transferred
out of the RAMDisk at your convenience (at the end of the day).

http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

There are many details to be worked out in such an approach, but
that was intended to give you an alternative solution - a solid
state storage which might be a bit cheaper than the Acard box.

*******

So those are some alternate ways of building storage systems.

My suspicion would be, the handling of I/O by the looprecorder
program, needs work... And even with the *best* hardware solution,
the program may cause problems.

Paul

Thank you very much for such care and rich ideas / new ways !

That is very good but I fear we don't have such money.
(but its interresting, i checked all the links)
All the more, the prog is told to run on normal desktop computers.
(I know if that was i would not be here )


I read in the help of the prog :

Performance

Loop Recorder uses special multimedia functions for disk reading and
writing, that don't use caching. So your disk cache will be kept clean
and ready for the files you access often. Please enable this in the
Config box.

On a P450, the minimized Loop Recorder runs with only 0.6% CPU usage.
You will not even recognize, that Loop Recorder is running. We recommend
to add it to the Startup folder of the Start Menu, so you will never
miss the beginning of something that you would have liked to record. "

And is true. Its takes much proc. when saving (i don't talk of editing)


J.

 

[Brian Cryer]

Le 6/29/2012 4:02 PM, Brian Cryer a écrit :

I did that already, they are deaf.
Even worst, obviously their prog is totally out of date, perhaps its the
reason its fails. There is no recent upgrade. Some windows in the prog
just refer to Win98 system files, and of course that works not.

Besides, its a mess cause the app could be (or is) excellent, and i have
never seen such an equivalent


Oh yes : tons of RED disk error : " Device bla bla has a bad bloc" (Event
7) Ok, but when running CHKDSK, it says all is ok : no bad sector. Would
the term bad bloc" be different from "bad sector" and not advised by the
check disk log result ???

Replace the disk.

Chkdsk might be saying the disk is okay, but the disk errors are very
significant. There is an error with the disk (or possibly with the cabling
or the controller on the board). I would replace the disk asap.

red-herring : what that means ?

Red-herring means it might lead you off in totally the wrong direction and
be a complete waste of time. From what you've said my suggestion about
fragmentation was a red-herring.

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 7/2/2012 11:03 AM, Brian Cryer a écrit :

Replace the disk.

Yes, thats ok.
But as already said : i had failures since almost 10 years with the Loop
using many different disks and computers.

But if i always do the same mistakes, the prog is not guilty !!
ie : take old drives for the temp / not check the temperature / cooling
/ not check the health ...

In the other hand, I would think the loop needs full brand new drives in
order to work properly ..

Chkdsk might be saying the disk is okay, but the disk errors are very
significant. There is an error with the disk (or possibly with the
cabling or the controller on the board). I would replace the disk asap.


Red-herring means it might lead you off in totally the wrong direction
and be a complete waste of time. From what you've said my suggestion
about fragmentation was a red-herring.

Ah yes, ok.

The author of the prog just answered me yesterday about one of the error
message when failing and said :

"The "temporary file too short" error occurs when the sound card driver
delivers an incorrect amount of data. Please try and update the driver. "
Does this prog also generates Red-herrings ??
I mean i can't believe its now a soundcard problem, as I used so many
diffirent sound cards, some brand news with new drivers, some gold old
ones, all full duplex ... So .. I don't know ...

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 7/2/2012 12:13 AM, Paul a écrit :

I tested the non-pro version of Loop Recorder.

I set the loop size to 16 hours. (44.1K, 16 bit samples, stereo,
times 16 hours times 3600 seconds per hour, gives 10GB data pool
in uncompressed .wav format.)

The tool was set to record in .wav . That eliminates the need
for an MP3 codec. Coding to MP3 could be done, using
the Quick Save file as an input to another program.

there is no other way to do. I mean the prog tapes all data in wav, it
does not encode the signal in real time. All temp files are wav files,
the encoding beggins just when you save.

Otherwise you won't be be able to edit if you would like : editing is
always from wav source files - at least for almost all sound editors.

It could be, that a bug exists in the MP3 CODEC, that only
becomes apparent when processing 10GB of data.

Yes, its another possible idea : a fail from the codec itself !!!

After waiting 16 hours, the loopdir temporary directory eventually
had 10GB of tiles in it. Each file in my case was 512KB. That's
about 20,000 files.

The program does not use much in the way of resources. Its
personal RAM usage was low, as was the percentage of CPU power
required.

from the Help file :

Performance

Loop Recorder uses special multimedia functions for disk reading and
writing, that don't use caching. So your disk cache will be kept clean
and ready for the files you access often. Please enable this in the
Config... box.

On a P450, the minimized Loop Recorder runs with only 0.6% CPU usage.
You will not even recognize, that Loop Recorder is running. We recommend
to add it to the Startup folder of the Start Menu, so you will never
miss the beginning of something that you would have liked to record. "

I used a single disk setup. C: partition held the temporary files.
I used E: partition to hold the Quick Save output.

When I click the Quick Save button, the program stops adding
new files to the temporary directory. Yet, it continues to
actually record the audio, so nothing is lost. And the RAM
usage does not grow. So where the information is stored, is
a mystery as far as Task Manager is concerned.

No no, in fact the prog continues to record (if setup like that in
Config) in adding new temp files to the temp. As a 15 hours saving is
pretty long (about 20 minutes lets say) it could not store the about 250
or 300 GB of wav data just in RAM or disk cache

The program is *very slow* at doing the Quick Save. The file operation
size is 64KB roughly. That means, to transfer and concatenate
the 20,000 files, takes roughly 160,000 head movements. If I had
used two separate physical disks, then all of the reads would have
been on one disk, and all of the writes would have been on
the other disk. Doing all of that on the one disk drive,
is a bit of stress for the head assembly.

Yes, totally agree. I always used seperates drives for this prog .

It took many minutes to complete the Quick Save. The Performance monitor
showed maybe 10MB/sec transfer rate, or about 16 minutes to copy
all the data. And no new recorded audio was lost during that interval.

I didn't see any truncated 512KB files. Nor did the Quick Save stop
or fail along the way. It all seemed to work.

Yes, if there was ONE single error, the WHOLE save would have crashed
with one of the first mentionned error messages.

I'd agree with your suggestion, of using an SSD. That may be the
best approach, and result in a speedup in the Quick Save. I have
no way of knowing though, whether that completely eliminates
the possibility of truncated or error filled files. The nice thing
about an SSD, is some of them can do 20,000 operations per second,
so the 160,000 operations needed, wouldn't take quite as long
with the SSD drive. It just needs to be big enough to
hold the loop directory (10GB size filled with 512KB files)
plus the 10GB output wave file from the Quick Save. Add in at
least another 20GB for the OS installation, and a 40GB SSD might
just be able to handle it, if you're using an older Windows OS.
Vista or Windows 7 or Windows 8 have a pretty large C: drive,
so you'd need a bigger SSD with those.

No problem : the ssd can be used just for the loop, its TEMP + the
saving result, that we can move after its done.

If you use that approach, I'd recommend reinstalling the OS,
installing an "AHCI" driver, and using a SSD with "TRIM" command
support. As that may do a better job of maintaining the pool
of unused space on the SSD.

One of these would do the job, without wearing out, but it's more
expensive than an SSD would be.

http://www.acard.com.tw/english/fb01-product.jsp?idno_no=271&prod_no=ANS-9010B&type1_idno=9&ino=123

Yes, I saw this interrsting ways of ssd's !
Thanks also for this tip !

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 6/30/2012 7:19 PM, VanguardLH a écrit :

So what does the program save? If it is collection thousands of small
audio files, what does the "Save" function do? Merge them all into one
audio file?

yes, but also convert them into mp3.


If so, it seems you could either use backup or snapshot

software to make sure you have a copy of all those audio files before
you do a save. If the save fails, you can restore and try again. Or
you could use other software to do the file merge. I'm sure the
alt.comp.freeware newsgroup could come up with something that would walk
through every audio file in a folder to merge their contents into a
larger audio file. I use FormatFactory but it isn't usable with such a
large number of files. You almost need something that runs as a batch
processor: gets a list of files and then appends them one at a time into
a larger audio file. The reason I mention a batch processor is to allow
the program to skip over bad audio files. If 3 are corrupted,
unreadable, or incorrectly formatted or truncated (at the beginning)
then something that processes one file at a time could skip a bad file
and keep going onto the rest to append them.

I already use Concat (small freeware) to repair failed saves from the
temp, but its a pain to do. Concat works with 2 GB max of files, so you
have to find many tricks to makes things possible.

If it's just the Save function that fails and if the Save merely merges
all the small audio files, there are other and probably newer and better
maintained merge utilities you could use. Instead of hitting Save in
LoopRecorder, you'd click a shortcut you put in a toolbar in the Windows
taskbar on on the desktop to run the audio merge batch processor
utility. The audio merge program would probably also do the conversion
between filetypes (i.e., .wav to .mp3 or whatever you want).

Yes, but we crually miss time and knowledge to manage those computing
things.

I'd say, if nothing else works, to replace their Save function with your
own (with an external program that does the same thing). I could
probably come up with a batch (.bat) file using a for-loop and an audio
merge program with a CLI (command-line interface) where it traversed
through a list of the files in a specified folder to merge them one at a
time to a larger audio file (and in a different audio format). If a
particular source audio couldn't be read or the merge failed then the
for-loop would skip it and move onto the next file in the list. I just
figure there's already something out there, and probably free, that
could walk through all files in a specified folder to merge them
together while skipping those that caused errors.


So the program still generates thousands of small audio files despite
you telling it to create a "loop" of 15 hours. Boobs! They don't honor
your configuration.

No no, the progs just works like that : the saving is just here to
rebuilt the i.e 15 houres loop - and do the file conversion in the same
time. No matter the prog does, if only it would work.

And if the Loop rec would not work with many little files, when you have
some errors in a 6 or 7 GB wav file, you could never save it after, it
would be totally messed up.

So you never paid for the program and are still running the trial
version (which much be a non-expiring trial version for you to be using
it for years)? I thought you said you paid around 200 euro for this
software.

No : I want to register for some reasons, one of those is to get support
because the prog is too strange to work without special support. The
trial expires, but you can always install other copies on other PC's. I
almost build one PC for each of my project, so ...

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 6/30/2012 8:00 PM, VanguardLH a écrit :

For example (I haven't use this free program):
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bonkenc/

To merge all the files into one big file, load (select) the files into
the joblist and select the "encode to single file" checkbox. Then start
encoding into the one output file. From posts in their forums there,
all the input files must all be at the same sampling rate and sample
resolution (which means you cannot mix mono and stereo). So if the
input files are different audio formats (not likely since they are being
produced by the same program, LoopRecorder), you might have to do 2
passes: batch mode to convert all the files to the same format followed
by the encoding of them all into one big file. Obviously you'll need
twice the disk space since the originals still exist as you're creating
the collection file, or you could create the collection file somewhere
else, like your save/archive location.

Before trialing this product, I'd ask in their forum if the batch
operation (the "joblist") will skip over corrupted or defective source
files. You don't want to get another product that aborts collecting
4000 audio files together just because 3 of them aren't usable.

Another freebie I found was http://sox.sourceforge.net/Docs/Features.
Users claim it can merge (concatenate or append together) a list of
audio files, do mixing, and even merge 2 mono files into a stereo file.
These are also mentioned as features on their web page. I don't know
why their Features page lists lots of audio format but their FAQ say it
outputs only Apple AIFF format. Maybe it can read all the audio formats
but only write to AIFF. If it does indeed only output AIFF then you
could use another audio converter (with a fancy GUI) to convert the big
file into a different audio format. This is a command-line utility for
batch processing of audio files. Don't know if you demand a pretty GUI
for an app and don't like having to specify command-line parameters.
They show an example batch (script) file for processing multiple input
audio files and, sure enough, it uses a for-loop to walk through a list
of files. From http://sox.sourceforge.net/sox.html, you add the -m
command-line switch to concatenate audio files into one output file.
I'm assuming that you would then, in the for-loop, specify the output
file as one of the input files (i.e., you concatenate the collection
file with another source file). The for-loop would be preceeded with a
copy command to create the first version of the collection file. You
could use a company banner message to declare the content is yours, copy
that into the collection.wav file, like:

copy c:\media\ournotice.wav e:\archive\collection.wav
for %%a in (%*) do sox -m e:\archive\collection.wav %%a e:\archive\collection.wav

This will only work if the program reads all of collection.wav into a
buffer and closes that file so it can then be overwritten. There are
other tricks possible by renaming files, like using collection.wav as a
source file in the for-loop but output to newcollection.wav and then in
another command in the for-loop renaming newcollection.wav to
collection.wav. I'm not really trying to provide a usable batch script
here and am only showing that batch processing is possible. If a
particular loop in the for-loop fails because the source file isn't
usable then the sox.exe program error (aborts) but the loop proceeds to
the next iteration to append the next audio file. Unless you test the
error code returned by a program, the for-loop isn't going to stop
because one iteration produced an error.

There are other programs that can do the merge of many audio files into
one big audio file. So you don't have to rely on LoopRecorder doing
that for you since it appears to often fail. Just do the same function
outside the program.

WOH .. thats is very usefull thoughts and directions for new way of
doing propper archives, but I need first to read your topic about 6
times to fully understand - and use translation tool for some words.
It warms me to get such a generous concern about our problems !
I'll examinate the whole post with a friend of me the next days, while
i'm in contact now with one of the loop author. And perhaps the SSD
thing will solve the whole problem !


have nice day

 

[Paul]

Ah yes, ok.

The author of the prog just answered me yesterday about one of the error
message when failing and said :

"The "temporary file too short" error occurs when the sound card driver
delivers an incorrect amount of data. Please try and update the driver. "
Does this prog also generates Red-herrings ??
I mean i can't believe its now a soundcard problem, as I used so many
diffirent sound cards, some brand news with new drivers, some gold old
ones, all full duplex ... So .. I don't know ...

Is the sampling rate you've selected, "native" to the sound card ?

For example, some sound cards, sample at 48000. When you request
44100 Hz rate, the sound card driver "re-samples" the 48000 samples
to make a 44100 stream.

If the sound card only truly runs at 48000, then select 48000 in the
looprecorder and run it that way. If you wish to do sample rate
correction, use the "Quick Save" file and do the correction in
post-processing.

I would attempt to use the "least stressful" settings for the
buggy looprecorder, and create a desired output in post-processing.
Therefore, I would run looprecorder in .wav mode, select a
sampling rate which is "native" to the sound card. Once I
"Quick Save" and have a 10GB sound file in hand, then I'd run
that through a sound editor to fix it. And do WAV to MP3 conversion
etc. See if that approach works better.

There are things you can do, to reduce stress on the recording
computer. Disable System Restore, disable Indexing, disable
thumbnail creation ( regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll ), remove
AV software (which might scan all the recorded files, while
you're doing "Quick Save"). Whether these things are worth
doing, is up to you. If the machine was disconnected from
the LAN, and all it was doing was making these recordings,
it might be worthwhile to set it up that way.

But the very first thing to do... replace that disk drive!
Use better cooling fans!

Paul

 

[Paul]

No no, the progs just works like that : the saving is just here to
rebuilt the i.e 15 houres loop - and do the file conversion in the same
time. No matter the prog does, if only it would work.

And if the Loop rec would not work with many little files, when you have
some errors in a 6 or 7 GB wav file, you could never save it after, it
would be totally messed up.

You should test Audacity.

It is not a "loop recorder", but it should be able to record
for 16 hours, if you have enough disk space.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

In Edit : Preferences : Directories , *untick* the box by

"Audio cache

Play and/or record using RAM..."

If that box is unticked, I think the recording time is then
limited by the size of %temp% space on the hard drive.

Click the record button. Wait 16 hours. Click the stop button.
Go to File : Export and save the recorded sound file to a
permanent location. You do not need to "Save the Project" when
exiting the program. If you exit without saving, the contents
of %temp% will be purged (10GB of files deleted).

Like the looprecorder, the temporary files are 1MB in size, and
there will be thousands of them. You can change the recording
sample format from "32 bit float" to "16 bit" to cut storage
requirements in half. The sound files are in proprietary
format, so cannot be immediately repaired or concatenated by hand.

In Audacity, you can also point the tool at your MP3 codec,
so that during Export, an MP3 could be created. I don't use
MP3 so haven't tried that. And the longest recording I've done
in Audacity, might be 2 hours or so. But Audacity tells me
there is sufficient disk space at the moment, to record
for 25 hours.

Paul

 

[Setup.exe]

Le 7/2/2012 6:44 PM, Paul a écrit :

You should test Audacity.

It is not a "loop recorder", but it should be able to record
for 16 hours, if you have enough disk space.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

In Edit : Preferences : Directories , *untick* the box by

"Audio cache

Play and/or record using RAM..."

If that box is unticked, I think the recording time is then
limited by the size of %temp% space on the hard drive.

Click the record button. Wait 16 hours. Click the stop button.
Go to File : Export and save the recorded sound file to a
permanent location. You do not need to "Save the Project" when
exiting the program. If you exit without saving, the contents
of %temp% will be purged (10GB of files deleted).

Like the looprecorder, the temporary files are 1MB in size, and
there will be thousands of them. You can change the recording
sample format from "32 bit float" to "16 bit" to cut storage
requirements in half. The sound files are in proprietary
format, so cannot be immediately repaired or concatenated by hand.

In Audacity, you can also point the tool at your MP3 codec,
so that during Export, an MP3 could be created. I don't use
MP3 so haven't tried that. And the longest recording I've done
in Audacity, might be 2 hours or so. But Audacity tells me
there is sufficient disk space at the moment, to record
for 25 hours.

Paul

Yes, thanks for the tip, but the main thing with the loop rec. is it
runs in loop mode and :

- converts while it saves
- continues recording when it saves

The great thing is to have a running program you don't have to manage
nor to care about, but you know all is recorded and you can save the
stuff even in the next day after a night of sleep, if you ever forget to
save just after a live moment .

 

[Brian Cryer]

Le 7/2/2012 11:03 AM, Brian Cryer a écrit :

Yes, thats ok.
But as already said : i had failures since almost 10 years with the Loop
using many different disks and computers.

But if i always do the same mistakes, the prog is not guilty !!
ie : take old drives for the temp / not check the temperature / cooling /
not check the health ...

Good point. Even so, I have only seen errors in the System event log when
there has been a hardware issue. So, whilst I still think there is a
hardware issue, you make a good case for why this isn't the underlying
cause.

I was going to reply to next part of your post - re the reply you had about
the sound card, but I can see that Paul has done a much better job in
responding than I would have been able to do.