Freesound Forums

Currently working on a project and havent even considered eventual file size.

I convert most things to .wav and due to the size of this project, I have noticed the folder with files in are creeping up and beginning to wonder if this will be an issue for the use of these files.

Folders are made up of individual SFX.

Does anyone have any sage advice on keeping file sizes down but without sacrificing the quality? Something I should really know about ....

Tried a brief search through the forum but if anyone could point me in the right direction, I would be grateful.

Many Thanks

David
FBM

If quality is enough of a concern to keep strongly compressed formats (OGG/MP3) under par, you need lossless compression, that means formats like FLAC.

By the way, what formats are you converting to WAV from? If you're starting from a lossy compressed file like OGG or MP3 that trade off quality for file size, that quality is gone forever and converting to WAV will have no pros and the big bad con of file size, so if you can't get a natively lossless source you might as well keep the compressed one if it sounds good enough.

Of course lossless compression formats won't get you as far as lossy ones, it can still help.
For a project I've recently worked on, the 762MB size of the WAV files I got was brought down to 533MB after conversion to FLAC.

HTH

Hey CC,

Thanks man, apologies first of all, I should of more accurately asked “How can I convert from WAV files to save space without sacrificing quality?”

I’m using a DR-05 recording in WAV format (16bit @ 44.1k in stereo) for most of the stuff at the moment and again, noticing the overall file sizes are getting big, I was worried in case I run in to an issue of file size for the use of the sound clips. So keeping the quality up, and size down would be something I hope to use to help prevent any issues on the clients end basically.

Oh your question was clear, it was just the "I convert most things to .wav" to raise a little alert in case you were also treating sources not originally wav other than recording your own sounds

This is an interesting list of lossless data compression formats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_codecs#Lossless_data_compression

You might try different ones and see which works best on your sources; if size is still an issue, you'd have to investigate on lossy compressors at their best quality settings and see if the quality loss is acceptable for you.

Maybe if you want to use any other type of sound file that will work on your computer I would use this to convert them, certain sound files make sounds have more gigabit than others so I would just use this converter, it is free and easy to use: http://audio.online-convert.com/

Also if this doesn't help maybe get a flash drive to store more sounds so you don't have to store it all on your computer and it would probably speed up your computer by doing so.

Hope this helped

Best Regards,
18hiltc

Using a flash drive to store the sounds could end in disaster,

Not stepping on your feet hiltc

But.

The more sounds he drags from that flash drive onto the project the more the flash drive has to stream into the project for playback, Depending on ram sample loading this could work , but as his project gets bigger so does the amount of sounds that have to come off that flash , Ableton for example would deal with this pretty easy. Protools would give it 5 mins then it would start running into drive stream issues.

The usual drive rpm needed for playback and recording of audio samples is 7200RPM, note that ableton is also pretty good with 5400.

I would suggest cropping your sounds and chopping them into exactly what's needed. clear your project bin of unused samples, and get a little audio stream drive for all your samples.

Also be careful whilst moving samples about , if your project is looking for them in different places every time you open it up its gonna start to do your head in.

Ive opened protools before and its attempted to look for 400 Sounds, took it ages, even when i knew were the sounds were.

Sorry hiltc - this might of came across as a big dig , it was not in any means.

Also, Here's a neat little filesize calculator.

<a href="http://www.sounddevices.com/calculator/" rel="nofollow">http://www.sounddevices.com/calculator/</a>

Its your friend.

Its fine, you taught me something new so no offence taken.

Thanks CC, I'm looking into that for future projects. Thankfully the brief has turned out to be not too bad or dependent on file size. Was me just being paranoid, but led me to actually think about the file sizes in future.

I organise (to OCD levels) everything for projects that are not my own into folders. Even write it down so I can at a glance have a kind of map of everything. So I just back everything up and tend not to stream audio when working with it, who knows what could happen. Thankfully thanks to modern technology, using large files hasn't slowed my computer down.

Learned a few things Thanks for the replies guys!