Track Length Longer Than Song, WAV Files Full of Repeats

[Ferryman]

I'm getting something odd on the BR-800. The tracks are getting populated with copies of track data and the track length is way longer than the song. OK, I know a song doesn't have an actual length, but I find that as I record more overdubs, the track length gets longer and longer.

I'm working on a song at present which is just over 3 minutes in length. I'm using onboard drums, I have a specific song arrangement I am using. I record bass and rhythm guitar tracks which run for the three minutes. I create a master bounce mix of the drums, bass and rhythm and then I then start recording various guitar parts as overdubs on different tracks and V-tracks.

Often, when overdubbing I will drop in and out at various times. If I screw up, I rewind and re-record over what I have just done (on the same V-track). Sometimes I use A:B to loop round a section until I get a good take, just pressing record again as the A:B loops starts.

This seems to be causing the track length to be extended. On this song, the track length is now over 15 minutes. When I export a WAV file of the track, the last section I recorded is repeated again and again to fill up the 15 minute track length, even though I never recorded past 3 minutes of actual time. I therefore have to cut the repeated data off the end of the WAV file.

This seems really odd, it's something that's started happening recently.  I can get round it by editing teh WAV files but it's annoying. Anyone got any thoughts or ideas on this?

[64Guitars]

My first thought was that you need to do a Song Optimize. But I looked in the BR-800 manual and was surprised to find that it doesn't seem to have that function. I believe the BR-800 is the only model in the BR series that does not have Song Optimize. Not sure why Boss didn't include it.

You could try the SAVE CURRENT STATE function instead. The manual says it erases unnecessary data which is what Song Optimize does too. So it's possible that they've merged the Song Optimize function into the SAVE CURRENT STATE function instead of making it separate.

Failing that, I'd do a full backup, format the card, then restore from the backup. If that doesn't solve the problem, then you might have to export each track as a WAV file, then create a new song and import those WAV files into it.

Often, when overdubbing I will drop in and out at various times. If I screw up, I rewind and re-record over what I have just done (on the same V-track).

That causes the kind of data fragmentation that Song Optimize is meant to correct. Although it's reasonable to believe that you're replacing your old data by recording over it, that doesn't actually happen. Instead, each recording is saved to a new area of the memory card and the data pointer for that track is adjusted to point to the new data. But the old data is still on the card. This is necessary to make the Undo feature work. If you don't like your latest track re-record, you can press Undo to go back to the old one (the BR merely changes the pointer from the new data back to the old data). The side effect of this is that all that old data accumulates and takes up space on the memory card. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with recording over a track. It just means that you should perform the SAVE CURRENT STATE procedure once in a while to remove the unneeded data and fix any wonky data pointers.

[Ferryman]

Thanks 64G. Sounds like I should probably use the Undo feature rather than just keep recording overdubs over the same time location. I will also try "save current state" to see if that helps.

[WarpCanada]

Is there a record mode in the BR800 that instead of overdubbing actually appends?

Otherwise, I am wondering if you have SD/CF card corruption and should reformat.