Hello! I am having a strange issue playing some wav files in ELAN on my computer (MacBook Pro, Monterrey 12.4) Certain wav files are showing up in Finder as having 0:00 duration although the MB size is right, and those files do not play either through the Finder dialog or in ELAN. Although the audio doesn’t play, the waveforms do show up properly in ELAN. The wav files play normally if I open them up in another application, such as Apple Music. A collaborator did not have any issues playing these wav files in ELAN.
I updated ELAN to the latest version, updated and then reinstalled my computer’s operating system, downloaded new copies of the wav files, unlinked and relinked the wav files in ELAN, and also unticked “Use Mac File Dialog” in ELAN preferences. Nothing has helped so far. Any thoughts would be very much appreciated!
Hello!
Although it is difficult to assess, it sounds like there must be something in the encoding of those wav files that is not entirely as it should be (even though Apple Music can play the file).
As far as the handling of the wav files in ELAN is concerned: the visualization of the waveform is performed by some part of ELAN’s own code, while playing a wav file (producing the sound) is handled by one of the known media frameworks, the default being Apple’s AVFoundation. After opening one of those files in ELAN and seeing the waveform but hearing no sound, you could go to View->View Log... to see if there are informative messages concerning the wav file.
The available media frameworks in ELAN are listed in the same preference panel as the Mac File Dialog setting (Edit->Preference->Edit Preferences->Platform/OS) and for the sake of testing you could try if e.g. JavaSound is able to produce the sound. (This setting applies to files that are opened after the change.)
But it is probably best to re-encode those files e.g. with Audacity or Handbrake and see if they then have a duration in Finder (they’ll probably play in ELAN then too).
-Han
Thank you so much! I re-encoded the files using Audacity and they’re working now.
