WAVScribe Viewer

Who it's for

• Production sound mixers and field recordists checking what a recorder actually wrote into a file
• Post-production teams checking what metadata is still there after an export
• Archivists and librarians inspecting broadcast metadata and stored checksums
• Game audio and music producers inspecting loop, sampler, and marker data
• Anyone who needs to know exactly what’s inside a WAV file

What it recognizes

When Viewer opens a file it will display all of the chunks that are present in that file. Up to 32 recognized metadata types are possible. If a chunk is not there, Viewer won’t show it.

Viewer also displays the technical facts of the file: format and codec, sample rate, number of channels, bit depth, duration, and file size. Also surfaced are fact and ds64 if present.

Any chunks Viewer doesn't decode are displayed and named for full transparency.

What it does

Formats

WAV, RF64, BW64, and big-endian RIFX are supported.

Reading a file

Every chunk present in the file is shown in an easy-to-read format. Scroll down section by section to view each chunk and its contents. A band showing the four-character chunk code, followed by its name and size identifies the start of that chunk. The contents are decoded to be meaningful. For example, loudness in LUFS, timecode from time references, UMIDs grouped on their SMPTE ST 330 boundaries, and dates and times formatted. Additionally, iXML and XMP are decoded into readable named fields rather than simply showing their raw markup. ADM documents, on the other hand, are displayed with syntax highlighting.

Seeing the file

A waveform is shown at the top of the window drawn at true amplitude. If a floating point file peaks above full scale, the view zooms out just enough to show the file’s true shape rather than showing the flat-top waveform.

All embedded artwork is displayed with its type labeled: front cover, back cover, artist, etc. If a picture is stored in a DISP chunk as Windows DIB data, it will be rendered as an image. Click any image thumbnail for a full size view.

File structure

A chunk map> shows every chunk in the file, in the exact order it appears in the file itself. It begins at “start of file” and ends at “end of file”. Click any highlighted chunk to quickly jump straight to its section.

Working with lots of files

Viewer accepts up to 100,000 files in a single drop. Import via drag and drop or the “Open” button above the files area. If a drive goes offline, its files stay in the list and Viewer won't freeze up. Once the drive is reconnected, just select the file again.

Finding files by chunk

When you need to find a particular chunk in a few or thousands of your files, the Chunks button helps you find them. Click the Chunks button to browse the list of metadata types. Double click an entry or type the four-character chunk ID to filter only those files that contain that chunk. Vendor specific chunks are also included.

Getting started

1. Drag a WAV file, folder, or mix of the two anywhere onto the window. Or click the “Open” button above the files area.
2. Notice that every chunk in the file is represented as a labeled box in its physical order on disk, from the start of the file to the end of the file. Chunks shown in brighter text can be clicked to jump straight to their section below.
3. Every embedded image in the file is shown as a thumbnail. Click one to open it to full size. If a file has identical copies of the same picture, only one picture will show with a count of how many are present.
4. The coverage readout says something like “Recognized metadata types 7 / 32” which means the file has 7 of the 32 metadata types that WAVScribe Viewer can detect.