Hi everyone,

On another site someone asked whether it would be possible to take a recording made by the Notes application and convert it to .wav format so it could be played on other equipment. I realize this is probably not something everybody wants/needs to do, but I was pleasantly surprised how easy it was to do, so, if any of you does have the need to make this conversion, and just to add to the knowledge base, this is how I did it.

You'll need to download a freeware audio editor named Audacity that another member, "thespot" alerted me to over in the Water Fountain forum. I did this on a Mac, but it's cross-platform, and I'm assuming the menus are the same for Windows.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Then.

(1) Copy .pwi (Note) file to PC

(2) Open Audacity

(3) Get the Note audio into Audacity by:

Project menu
Import as raw data

(4) Select all of the audio by clicking below its file name at left of the graphic of the file

(5) Click on dropdown menu (arrow next to file name)

Set Rate to 11025 Hz

(6) Convert to WAV by:

File menu
Export as wav

That did it for me.

Now, I didn't try to see whether this would also work on a note that had both audio and text in it. But it will certainly work on a note with just audio in it. I was really impressed with Audacity.

Marc

if you are using the recorder...its already a wav.

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Driftless....

Well, duh. So it is. Change my advice to: "for those of you who foolishly used the recording function inside Notes instead of simply hitting the Record button and now need to convert your mistakes to wav . . . "

(Never use either myself: notem instead.)

Thanks, Driftless. This will keep others on the straight-and-narrow, I hope.

Marc

whoops. i dont have the button mapped, but were you meaning for text+notes to wav? might have to try that.

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Driftless....

Or try Resco audio recorder and record any of the supported formats you like.

Hi Driftless,

I'm not exactly sure what you're referring to. The user who sent me on this chase had opened Notes, opened a new note, and made a recording inside it. The resulting file gets saved as a Notes file--.pwi--though I suppose it's got an embedded .wav file in it.

It was extracting that embedded file that was the challenge. But if I hit the big hardware record button at any time, while I see the exact same recording interface as I had inside Notes, the resulting file is simply saved as a .wav file, as you pointed out.

t53186: I've read good things about Resco Audio Recorder, too. Notem's free, though. The key thing is finding a recording program that won't hog the space a WAV file does.

Marc

Ok, I had no idea this was going to be so difficult. I unknowingly just hade a meeting I recorded, inside a note, in which not only did I write text (meeting notes), I have 3 separate recordings! They are recorded using GSM 8000hz because it uses so little space. I thought they would just be accessable as wav files I could move over to my PC. HELP! I need to convert these to MP3 to forward to some colleagues...

Hi cscotti,

Welcome to the site. Sorry you've got yourself into this little fix.

Do you mean these were recorded with a bandwidth of 8000Hz? You might try my routine at the top of this thread, since Audacity will convert the raw data to various bandwidths (though I don't remember whether 8000 is one of the choices, notice the Note WAV files are saved at 11025 Hz) and can be saved as mp3 or WAV. (I you do this, the recordings will appear in reverse chronologocal order. That is, the last recording made will be first extracted from the file. Same is true for Menneisyys' little program.)

Alternatively, you might try running this little program Menneisyys write to extract sound files. There's no interface. You just choose the file for the extraction to take place on. (It's possible you might still have to tweak the bandwidth in Audacity, too.)

"The Pocket PC version can be found here, while the PC version can be found here. Both require the CF framework, which is installed by default on all WM2003+ devices.

Tested on both an iPAQ 2210 and a Pocket Loox 720 (and, of course, the PC version on the desktop); works flawlessly.

Using on the Pocket PC:

1, download the ZIP file

2, extract the CAB file meant for your device. For example, all WM2003+ users should extract PWI_Embedded_Sound_Extractor_ARMV4.CAB. Transfer it to your PDA.

3, start File Explorer on your PDA and click the CAB file. Alternatively, you can use CabInstl or other tools like FileDialogChanger to install it on a storage card.

4, start the application (it doesn't have any fancy icon - just look for the name PWISoundExtractor)."

The whole thread that contains this program could be consulted at:

http://www.pocketpcmag.com/forum/top...TOPIC_ID=16597

Good luck.

Marc