The Checkbox of Doom

Sometimes you make a mistake that has absolutely devastating consequences and you did nothing wrong.

Or, well, that might not be 100% true, because what you did was wrong; it was just the fact that what you did wrong was, in fact, something you didn't do. And when you eventually realize just what the problem was to begin with you are sorely tempted to kick a dolphin. In the neck.

Let us turn our eyes toward the wonderful little piece o' software that is Adobe Audition.

Once upon a time there was a program called Cool Edit. All the cool kids did it. Used it. Something! Heck, I used it once or twice way back when (although I was more of a GoldWave fan when I was a wee boy). Cool Edit was cool, yo. It had fancy features. At one point it even introduced support for the .ACM format! Holy hell. Also, it was cool. It was made by Syntrillium Software and was released as crippleware for Ye Olde Windowse 3.11e in the 1830s. Did I mention how cool it was? The crippleware version wasn't too great but once you upgraded and got all the awesome functions? Wow-wee. Sure, you only had the one audio track to work with but when they released Cool Edit Pro you suddenly had multiple tracks. Mind blown yet? Why, I sure hope so!

The coolness! It burrrrrnssss!

Then, in 2003, Adobe purchased Cool Edit Pro - which had, at that time, reached the esteemed version number of v2.1 - for $16.5 million. They got some kind of loop library thingymaguffin at the same time and that was awesome or something. Hooray for Ah-doh-bee! Now they could doh all the bees in the world!

And so they did. Adobe changed the whole situation around by re-naming their newly acquired piece of software Audition and people soon forgot all about the whole thing.

Though the software's old name had been destroyed, the audio world was peaceful again...

But time flows like a river... and history repeats...

Now, we need to talk a little bit about metadata. Essentially it's like this: You can put stuff inside of your stuff and if something in the far distant future when this process becomes necessary needs to see that stuff you can allow it to do so. I jest. You've probably stumbled across metadata several times already, especially if you're an .MP3 buff and your sixteen external HDDs are packed to the limit with soundtracks. NotthatIwouldknowanythingaboutthatyouknowjustsaying. In that, ehum, highly unlikely case, you've probably tried to get your artist tags correct, your album information to display correctly and so on. Yuppers, that's metadata.

Now, metadata isn't only for the rich kids anymore. A lot of file formats can use the li'l bugger, and the .WAV file is no exception. You even have these new schnazzy formats like .BWF (Broadcast Wave File) that are apparently meant to contain a lot of the meta-stuff. I'unno, I haven't given it a lot of thought. Apparently this is the case. I mean, metadata makes sense if you're creating a naming convention for your sound file database (see my last post! Give it more clicks! Moooore!!) but honestly, I just name the files whatever I want and search for the file names. Maybe it's me who's weird. I don't know.

What I do know is that when it comes to metadata in .WAV files, Adobe Audition is there for ya, man. It wants to help you the hell out so you can focus on the more important stuff in life, such as poisoning pigeons in the park or running over a long row of people with a sports car ("GOURANGA!"). The program is even kind enough to leave a certain checkbox checked when you export a wave file from it. How nice of it!

There's just a teensy-weensy problem. See if you can spot it. Keep in mind, the region we wish to export is about 2 seconds long.

Nothing? Let me point it out to you.

... Ah.

Now, that can't possibly be right. This is 2 seconds of .WAV data. It can't be that big. Now put yourself in my boots for a second and imagine that you've gone through about 1,5 hours of recorded voice acting, split everything into small files (one file per dialog line), edited the exports and then implemented those files into a game. Do you know what that game's engine told me when I tried doing this? Well, basically it was the equivalent of "Ohmygaawwhd, that doesn't go in there! What are you even doing?! That's just way too big! All of them in the same place?! I CAN'T TAKE IT WHAT THE ACTUAL FU-"

... you get the idea.

When this happened I was completely nonplussed. Dumbfounded. Bewildered. This error shouldn't be. It just shouldn't be. It was impossible. Now, you guys are already facepalming in advance because, see, I pointed the problem out to you. Imagine that you're me - again, with the boots, the whole deal - and you have no Duckburgian clue what's going on. None. Zilch. Nada.

And then - again, boots, me, thingy - look at the individual file sizes of the exported .WAV files. Stare at them - remember, boots - and feel your jaw hit the floor. 2 seconds of audio takes up how much space?!

Go back into Audition - boots - and look at the export dialog again. Uncheck that tiny checkbox that Audition so helpfully pre-checked for you. Stare some more.

A-yup. That does look a bit more like it, doesn't it.

So today's lesson, kiddos, is that when you do stuff you need to pay attention because when crap hits the very big and well-ventilated air duct, the actual problem might actually reside in the very beginning of the chain of events. Sometimes it's all caused by one single checkbox.