I'm trying to encode a very large file (a single .WAV file that's over a gigabyte in size) using the win32 command line version of LAME 3.85.

I'm encoding a 192kbps constant bit rate with the high quality option.

It cruises along fine for the first 40-50% of the encode. The initial time-to-encode countdown estimates are in the range of 30-40 minutes.

But twice now, about halfway through the file, it locks up and quits encoding. It seems to be doing some heavy CPU-grabbing during the lockup because the rest of the system gets terribly sluggish and my mouse pointer's movements become jerky. The only way my system can go back to normal is if I terminate the DOS window that's running LAME.

I know I'm not low on disk space: Neither on the disk drive that holds LAME (2gb free), the Windows Temp directory (same drive), or the MP3 destination folder (3gb free).

So does anyone know if LAME has bugs with large files?

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Tony Fabris

After waking up this morning and turning the computer back on, I was able to perform the full encoding without a problem. Go figure.

___________
Tony Fabris

I had some other problem. I encoded an almost 3 hour wav with as VBR with a minimum of 128kbit but the first frame is a 32kbit frame. This only occurs with this file (version 3.87).

Walter
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Reg:1934/Mk1:158-6Blue/Mk2:380-12Blue

I had some other problem. I encoded an almost 3 hour wav with as VBR with a minimum of 128kbit but the first frame is a 32kbit frame. This only occurs with this file (version 3.87).

I think that's a feature. From the manual:

When used with variable bitrate encoding (VBR), -b specifies the minimum bitrate to be used. However, in order to reduce space wasting, during silences the smallest frame size available will be used.

Borislav