Nonstop recording. How? 4.5 hours+

[sleadley]

This probably has more to do with making sessions backwardly compatible with older systems than anything else. There are a lot of older systems still floating around that run on OS 9. I imagine that they would be pretty annoyed if they could not open sessions because the files were too big.
I understand your frustration (it gets worse when you record at 96k) but I can see why Digidesign has kept the limit in place for the time being. Hopefully in the future....
my 2c
Simon L.

[JFreak]

This probably has more to do with making sessions backwardly compatible with older systems than anything else. There are a lot of older systems still floating around that run on OS 9. I imagine that they would be pretty annoyed if they could not open sessions because the files were too big.

That's one explanation, but not very good one. If there was a 16GB wav file for example, there could also be a converter utility that ran on OS9 and chopped the file into 2GB chunks. There's enough backwards compatibility for the few crazy people who are brave enough to work on 16GB files on OS9. Just for an example.

And that explanation forgets my suggestion of letting user specify the max file size (for example 650MB) which could be that 2GB by default. There is just no sane explanation to why Protools should stop recording before hard drive is full. It could just keep starting new files once the old file is full, whether that file was 2GB or something else.

Am I really close to only person who finds it unacceptable that Protools stops recording once file size of 2GB is reached? What if that limit was 4 minutes, how many would be upset then? Point being there should not be such a limit. This currently cannot be solved by buying more hard drive, because no matter how large the storage, Protools might stop recording before the operator wants to.

[SlowTools]

This probably has more to do with making sessions backwardly compatible with older systems than anything else. There are a lot of older systems still floating around that run on OS 9. I imagine that they would be pretty annoyed if they could not open sessions because the files were too big.
I understand your frustration (it gets worse when you record at 96k) but I can see why Digidesign has kept the limit in place for the time being. Hopefully in the future....
my 2c
Simon L.

Good point, but Pro Tools doesn't have to incur a limit. It just has to start writing new files without telling me so i can record until my HD is full, then I can feel like an idiot instead of calling Pro Tools stupid. RADAR does it. It's in the programming. Even if the limit was 2 Mb, it could just give you a folder full of 2 Mb files when you're done recording all day. Or if you had a cassette and had to flip the tape, aka Auto Reverse. Just flip the damn tape over before 2 Gb, is that too hard to make a computer program just flip the tape and not warn me about it and quit?

[Nathan W.]

Really great thread. So what's the BEST non-PT based continuous multi-track digital recording system available today?

[fourthtunz]

I guess you could bring really good convertors and record into protools at 16 bit?
I know, heresy.
Daniel

[narcoman]

It really *IS* a PT restriction. To be more exact, it seems to be a side-product of not updating code from ancient (HFS introduced in 1985) to current (HFS+ introduced in 1998) regarding file handling. Modern file system do not restrict file sizes in real life. Here are some intersting max file sizes:

Ancient Macintosh: HFS original, 2 gigabytes
Current Macintosh: HFS plus, 16 exabytes
Ancient Windows: FAT original, 2 gigabytes (later modified to 4 gigabytes)
Current Windows: NTFS, 16 exabytes

Exabyte is million times more than terabyte, so there is no relevant technical reason why there could not be bigger files. And even less reasons to implement such a system I described earlier. Stopping recording is just simply not acceptable, whether it needs some work to be done or not. I'm not sure if Digidesign listened to my request or not, but I have at least tried.

true enough, but PT and many other DAWs still use 32 bit file addressing and 32bit addressed audio formats (integer remember). Needs updating fo sho but thats the issue...... its an overhang from the good old days and the fact that the WAV format is still limited to a 32 bit header which in turn dictates the max size of the file. It isnt necessarily a PT issue. W64 is not universally implemented. Give it time.

[peachy]

It really *IS* a PT restriction.

It's a restriction that digidesign needs to fix if they want to remain the standard for post production sound element delivery.
Some of the major studios are starting to require 24bit/96k sessions for archival purposes and there are lots of movies out there that are over 2 hours long. It's not acceptable that we have to stop recording at the 2 hour mark and punch in non-destructively to record the last part of the movie.

[narcoman]

as i said above - it is addressed by W64 files - but they are NOT an accepted standard yet !

[SlowTools]

Yay Pro Tools 8 is coming: 4 Gb file sizes. That means 9 hours at 44.1k, 24 bit.