![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Transcription & Audio File Conversions
May. 10th, 2012 08:41 amI noticed that some of the Mac and Windows transcription software seems a bit sensitive... case sensitive, that is.
The file extensions for audio files, such as .wav or .mp3, were choking up in some software and opening in others. After more than a decade of being desensitized to extension case thanks to various Windows products, and despite much more than a decade using the Mac and UNIX and Linux and other software where .wav and .WAV are not equivalent (at least at the operating system level), it took me a while to catch why this was happening.
I am so used to modern software (i.e. the applications, not the operating system) understanding that an extension is an extension, and the file type doesn't change just because .wav is not .WAV or, more importantly, vice versa. It seems that some programmers of audio transcription software aren't making much efforts on file type recognition. They are failing on the surface level: they will accept .wav or .mp3 (or many other file formats), but they are not able to comprehend .WAV or .MP3, when other software can easily understand them and not allow an extension (a legacy of ancient DOS history) to cripple them and prevent them from working properly.
So while the programmers are fixing that, they should also see about their installation procedures and register the software for the file types it can handle ~ on the Mac, this makes the difference between opening a file directly at the file, or having to go and open the app and then load or open the file...
Simple things, and they can be worked around, but, really, it all comes down to lazy coding...
The file extensions for audio files, such as .wav or .mp3, were choking up in some software and opening in others. After more than a decade of being desensitized to extension case thanks to various Windows products, and despite much more than a decade using the Mac and UNIX and Linux and other software where .wav and .WAV are not equivalent (at least at the operating system level), it took me a while to catch why this was happening.
I am so used to modern software (i.e. the applications, not the operating system) understanding that an extension is an extension, and the file type doesn't change just because .wav is not .WAV or, more importantly, vice versa. It seems that some programmers of audio transcription software aren't making much efforts on file type recognition. They are failing on the surface level: they will accept .wav or .mp3 (or many other file formats), but they are not able to comprehend .WAV or .MP3, when other software can easily understand them and not allow an extension (a legacy of ancient DOS history) to cripple them and prevent them from working properly.
So while the programmers are fixing that, they should also see about their installation procedures and register the software for the file types it can handle ~ on the Mac, this makes the difference between opening a file directly at the file, or having to go and open the app and then load or open the file...
Simple things, and they can be worked around, but, really, it all comes down to lazy coding...