Re: [linux-audio-dev] how to handle large files

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Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] how to handle large files
From: Adam Williams (broadcast_AT_earthling.net)
Date: su helmi  06 2000 - 11:56:19 EST


This issue seems to come up every 4 years and die come April. If you
were to look inside a TV station the way professional editing suites
handle large files is what is known as an Edit Decision List. A multi
gigabyte audio file is usually called an "asset" and stored on a
backroom server. The user workstation stores an EDL. The EDL contains
pointers to regions in the assets without storing a single sample
itself. When you load an EDL, all you really load are the pointers, say
"track1.wav channel 2 sample 2000000". Then with a little indexing
magic, the editing program looks up just the right samples in the right
assets and instantly draws on the timeline what looks like a single wav
file, but it's really a whole bunch of regions of different wav files.

The problem with EDLs is that it's hard to manage all the different
assets. How do you make sure no EDL's link to the asset you're
deleting? How do you ensure users don't save their EDL thinking they're
saving a WAV file and then delete the assets? What if you overwrite an
asset with a file in a different format? A lot of CS graduates make a
lot of money just designing asset management systems.

-- 
                               Heroine Virtual
                            heroine.linuxbox.com
                      Render the impossible into reality


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