Voicemail WAV files

[The Palmster]

Can someone please explain this to me. When I retrieve an e-mail with a voice-mail ".wav" file as an attachment, I cannot listen to it directly from my T|X as it shows up as an "unsupported wav file". If, however, I save the actual .wav file from my desktop's e-mail program directly to an SD card on my T|X, I can then play it using TCMP or Wave Player via the Versamail application (i.e. I create a new e-mail; attach the .wav file from the SD Card; save the e-mail to draft and then open the draft e-mail and run the attachment).

Why do I have to save the file from my PC to my T|X to play it? Why can I not play this file directly from versamail when I receive the e-mail? What happens to the file when I save it to an SD card that causes it be playable in versamail and TCMP?

Sorry for all the questions but I'm pretty stumped to explain this. Thanks for your help.

[alt236]

What happens if you try and save the attachment from inside versamail? Does it play then?

[The Palmster]

What happens if you try and save the attachment from inside versamail? Does it play then?

Nope. That doesn't work either. You have to save it from the PC to the SD card and then play it in Versamail or TCMP. Very very strange.

[alt236]

Try checking the file sizes of the two files. Is there any difference?

[The Palmster]

Try checking the file sizes of the two files. Is there any difference?

YES! The file is almost 50% larger when saved from the PC as opposed to directly from Versamail. Is the PC decompressing the attachment automatically or is Versamail compressing it? That might explain the problem!

[alt236]

Open them in notepad (or any text editor) and see if there is any difference in the beginning of the file. It might shed some light :)

[_Em]

My guess is that it's a GSM file that the PC is decompressing into a WAV file. That's only a guess based on almost 0 information though :)

[alt236]

@_Em
That's my theory as well...
We'll see from the file headers.

Is there a gsm player for palm?

[_Em]

Aha!
http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/toast.html
There is a .wav chunk format #49 that encodes GSM 06.10 frames. Newer Windows versions support it natively. It's a completely parallel version to ours, written from the same ETSI pseudocode, but ending up with imcompatible framing and different code order in the bytes.

After fretting over intellectual property rights for a few months, Microsoft has now registered the encoding inside the WAV chunk as a MIME type, particularly for use in the context of VPIM (Voice Profile for Interenet Mail)'s spinoff IVM, a way of sending Voice Messages as MIME documents.

I'm not sure if non-MS codecs support these files, but it sounds exactly like what would be used in the current situation. Maybe all he has to do is change the file ending from .wav to .gsm?

I'd try it under TCPMP, Kinoma and pTunes to see if it works, first with a .wav tag, then with a .gsm tag.

I'm pretty sure TCPMP supports true GSM files.

[The Palmster]

The text of the working and non-working wav files are very different.

The one that works starts off like this "RIFF’b
WAVEfmt".

The one that does not work starts off with a huge string of letters starting like this "UklGRpJiAQBXQVZFZm10" then followed by a ton of forward slashes with some letters interspersed throughout.

Does this mean anything?

[The Palmster]

This is interesting. When I try to play the non-working wav file direct from the TX's SD card into MediaPlayer on the desktop I get the following error: "Windows Media Player cannot play the file. The Player might not support the file type or might not support the codec that was used to compress the file."

I am now convinced that the PC/Outlook program is somehow automatically uncompressing the wav file so that it can then be played. I take from this that Versamail on the Palm T|X does not have the ability to uncompress or convert or whatever the PC/Outlook program is doing with the wav attachment.

Does this make sense?

[alt236]

The one that works is a proper wav file (wav is derived from the RIFF format).

The other one seems to be encoded/compressed somehow, so yes what you say makes sense :).

[_Em]

I just had a brainwave... it is possible that the file is in fact encoded in TNEF format. To test this out, get WinMail Opener, and see if that can convert the file.

Of course, if the file is much smaller, it is probably using audio compression; check with your IT staff to see what format the files are saved in.

[bdball]

I had the same problem using Versamail and having CorePlayer. Could not play the wav file. Then I started using Agendus Mail SSL. I have no problem now. Seems Versamail does not download the wav file correctly for what ever reason. Try the agendus demo and see if it works.