Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

vbnut
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

In mid-June I did a day hike in Yosemite National Park, and recorded voice memos for a couple shots on my R3. I long ago used my custom script that uses exiftool to copy the images from the CFexpress card to my computer storing them in a date-based folder hierarchy and renaming them to follow the conventions I use in Lightroom Classic. Fortunately I noticed that there were some WAV files on the CFexpress card, so I modified my script to copy them too. I then erased the card.

Canon's EOS R3 Advanced User Guide says Voice memos are recorded as WAV audio files with the same file number as the image. They can be played back by the camera or a computer., but among the 84 files in the folder for this trip, I see only one WAV file, and it does have the same base name as one of my CR3 images files. When I play the WAV file it sounds like it contains 2 voice memos, one after the other. The English audio is clearly two different memos: "from the trail to vernal falls" and "nevada falls", and even the background noise (of the river/waterfalls) clearly changes between the two memos.

My questions are

Has anyone else used the memo recording feature on the R3 and played back the memos on a computer?
Is the R3 Advanced User Guide incorrect (as it appears to me) about how/where the voice memos are stored on the card?
Is there any way for me to correlate the 2 voice memos in the 1 WAV file on my computer with the CR3 image files they are associated with?

Aug 13, 2023 at 11:51 PM

melcat
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

I use it and it works, each memo in a .WAV file with the same base name as the .CR3 file to which the memo belongs.

The memo is recorded for the image currently being reviewed, not the last one shot. And if you record another memo for an image, it is appended to the end of the recording for that image rather than replacing it. So you must have been reviewing the original image when doing the second recording, perhaps by accidentally bumping a dial.

Aug 14, 2023 at 02:36 AM

vbnut
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

melcat wrote:
The memo is recorded for the image currently being reviewed, not the last one shot. And if you record another memo for an image, it is appended to the end of the recording for that image rather than replacing it. So you must have been reviewing the original image when doing the second recording, perhaps by accidentally bumping a dial.

Thank you for this explanation/clarification. This was my first attempt at adding voice memos and I must have done it incorrectly as you suggest. Live and learn.

Aug 14, 2023 at 01:59 PM

melcat
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

I realised tonight that there could be a way to relate the recordings back to the images, using the file timestamps. It’s highly likely you can match up the second one, and there’s a good chance you can match the first one.

ExFAT supports creation time and revision time, so the first voice memo was recorded at the time the .WAV file was created, and the second when it was modified. I ran a test using my R3, making two memos for the same image at different times, and those times show up in the macOS Finder using “Get Info” as “Created:” and “Modified:”. I then copied the .WAV file to the desktop by dragging it, and both times were preserved on the copy.

Depending on how your ingestion script works, the creation time of your .WAV file might have been replaced by the ingestion time, but the modification time was very likely to have been preserved. You can then compare the time(s) against the modification times of the image files. Note that the ExFAT times were local time on the camera; some software mistakenly thinks they are UTC, but any such offset should be obvious.

Aug 15, 2023 at 06:19 AM

vbnut
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

melcat wrote:
I realised tonight that there could be a way to relate the recordings back to the images, using the file timestamps. It’s highly likely you can match up the second one, and there’s a good chance you can match the first one.

That is very creative thinking. I'm impressed.

It appears that both the creation and modification time were preserved as they are both from the day I took the hike, and are about an hour apart. I was able to find the last images and a video I captured before the modified time, and they are of Nevada Falls. The images and video were captured more than 5 minutes before the modification time of the WAV file. There are no gaps in the image numbers, and I don't remember deleting any images in the camera, but that does lead me to a couple questions.

If I take a photo, then immediately review and delete it in camera, will the next photo I take reuse the same image number as the photo I deleted?
If I take a photo, review it and add a voice memo, and then subsequently delete the photo, will the voice memo get deleted along with the photo?

I guess I can just do an experiment to find out, but since I've already typed the questions I'll see if anyone know the answers.

Edited on Aug 15, 2023 at 05:16 PM · View previous versions

Aug 15, 2023 at 04:57 PM

stanj
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

No and yes. And yes you could experiment

Aug 15, 2023 at 05:02 PM

justashooter
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

Yes, the .wav file will be deleted along with the image file.

Aug 15, 2023 at 06:52 PM

melcat
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Anybody using Voice Memo Recording and Playback?

vbnut wrote:
If I take a photo, then immediately review and delete it in camera, will the next photo I take reuse the same image number as the photo I deleted?

It does on mine, but I have numbering set to start at 1 anew for each folder.

Aug 16, 2023 at 07:04 AM


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