CODEWITHSUNDEEP
headerwav
fuz
fuz

Reputation: 93082

Writing wav files of unknown length

The various headers of a wav-file contain file-length information. Consider the case where I generate a wav file without knowing how long it is going to be and possibly without the ability to alter the header after I finished (i.e. in case of writing to a pipe), what should I write into these fields?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1425

Answers (1)

Sam
Sam

Reputation: 7398

Either way this isn't an ideal situation. But, if there's absolutely no way to edit the file, I'd recommend writing 0xFFFFFFFF, that is, the maximum possible value that can be assigned to the Subchunk2Size field of a standard wav header (albeit somewhat of a hack). Doing so will allow the whole file to be read/played by practically all players.

As some players solely rely on this field to calculate the audio's length (so it knows when to loop, how far to allow seeking, etc.), therefore, saying the file is longer than it actually is will "trick" the player into processing the entire file (although, depending on the player an error may occur once it reaches the end of the audio).

Upvotes: 7

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