gwc wav files created by recent versions of ffmpeg can't be opened (upstream issue)

Create a file like this: ffmpeg -i in.wav out.wav

Try to open the file in gwc and you get a WARNING window:

Failed to open /root/out.wav, 'Error : Cannot open file in read/write mode due to string data in header.'

This discussion might be useful: https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/1843

sndfile-info shows this additional information in the header:

LIST : 26
  INFO
    ISFT : Lavf55.33.100

Oct 27 '14 22:10 AlisterH

This discussion might be useful

Also see the associated ticket at http://sourceforge.net/p/pure-data/bugs/945/

And more importantly, this old discussion: http://music.columbia.edu/pipermail/linux-audio-dev/2004-August/009672.html

Oct 28 '14 03:10 AlisterH

One workaround is to convert the file with mhwaveedit instead of ffmpeg

Oct 28 '14 03:10 AlisterH

Link above is dead, here is a new one: http://lists.linuxaudio.org/pipermail/linux-audio-dev/2004-August/009672.html

Jul 26 '16 05:07 AlisterH

I neglected to note here that I later filed a ticket upstream which was closed on the basis that it is too much work: https://github.com/erikd/libsndfile/issues/80 If anyone is reading this you probably just need to look at the information in that ticket and the link I posted there - the other links here are a bit more peripheral.

IIRC I thought that mhwaveedit must implement his suggested workaround, so they may have some code we could copy.

Jul 26 '16 06:07 AlisterH