2 to 4 gig files...

[jeff b]

With DV files, I've been routinely capturing *.AVI files over 2gigs (up to 4 gig) over the past couple of months. Only today did I discover that Windows Explorer won't let me move them from one disk to another if they're over 2 gigs. There's an error message that says: 'Cannot create or replace (filename). The parameter is incorrect.'

They all work just fine in VideoStudio, and MSP 6, though. Discovering this little limitation, however, leads me to suspect that trouble might be forthcoming if I were to, say, try to defrag a drive with files such as these on it. Or do anything else with them in windows that would require their being moved in any way. A consequence of this is that I now have to make sure that my captures are going to go where I ultimately want them, since they can't be moved afterwards.

I'm curious as to whether anyone knows if this little glitch is simply Windows looking at the file extension and determining that a *.AVI file type cannot exist, or is there more to it?

[Serengeti]

So far as I know, the FAT32 hard drive partition type has a file maximum size of 2gb. If you were able to cap a file larger than that... then perhaps the program you used to capture with actually made other media files that, in combination, were larger than 2gb... or perhaps they captured, but Windows won't let you alter them in any way because its encountered a problem with the filesystem... or perhaps I'm way off

[fluggo99]

No... FAT32 supports up to 4 GB... supposedly, anyways. I wonder if the Microsoft people bothered to check if you could copy that much from one drive to another.

I'll bet it's something really simple, like the file size being interpreted as a signed integer-- where the high bit that usually signals whether the number is above or below 2 billion is instead used to signal if the number is negative or not. (3,000,000,000 bytes would become maybe -999,999,999 bytes)When a program encounters a negative number, it usually takes it to mean an error occured.

Incidentally, that's what'll kill all our current 32-bit clocks in about 2043.

[jeff b]

Thanks, Fluggo... I haven't written any code in so long that I forgot the signed/unsigned difference. That's gotta be the basis of the phenomenon.

Serengeti: the current crop of IEEE-1394/DV programs will capture up to 4gig files, play them back, and handle them in editing without any problems. The highest 32 bit unsigned number is 4,294,967,296, whereas the highest signed 32 bit number is +2,147,483,648 and the lowest is
-2,147,483,648. So it appears that although programs such as MSP6, VideoStudio, et al, will create and handle up to 4 gigabyte filesizes, and Windows will let them exist on a hard drive, Windows does not want to have to do anything with them at all since it behaves as if it handles filesizes as signed, not unsigned.

[jeff b]

Sheesh! I always forget to start counting at zero! Now I gotta celebrate the new millenium all over again!

[Michel Carleer]

Jeff b,
Just one small error: greatest 32 bits signed number is +2,147,483,647, not +2,147,483,648.
Michka