Individual Track Export File Size Too Large

[miriamlovessound]

Hello,

I am facing an export issue in audition and would need more clarification into if it is actually normal or if I need to change something.

THE PROBLEM

I just finished work on Foley for a movie project and am trying to export the individual tracks to send to the Sound Mixer. The exported files, however, are pretty large and are all the same size even though some tracks have less recorded audio and little to no processing.

STEPS TAKEN SO FAR

I have tried using multiple options such as:

1.  Time selection to export
2.  Selecting clips on each track to export
3.  To test, I tried exporting the entire session (as a single file) and it was 2.28 GB in size. Exactly the same size as each individual track.

FYI

1.  Little to no effects were applied on audio files.
2.  Processing like Pitch shifting, EQ and automation was done sparingly
3.  Stock Sound Library audio files were used on occasion

MOVIE AND SETTINGS INFORMATION

1. The running time of the film is 1hr 40 Min

2. The sample rate for project and export is 48 KHZ

3. The Bit Depth for project and export is 32 bit float integer (Tried switching to 32 bit)

4. The format is .WAV

SCREENSHOTS

Individual tracks exports with file size information

Entire project mixdown

 Export Settings

I truly hope I can find a solution to this or at least have more insight into why this happens as I am fairly new to this problem.

Thank you.

[SteveG_AudioMasters_ · Accepted solution]

I did a quick sanity check on the file size you've got, and it's pretty much correct - 100 minutes of 48k stereo audio takes up 2.304GB of disk space. If you want to work this out for yourself, you can either multiply everything up from first principles, or take the much easier path and use the online calculator here - I like this one because it's refreshingly straightforward.

I think that what's going on is that each file is going to be the size of the entire mixdown file, and the parts within it are going to be surrounded by silence - and that silence takes up just as much room as the audio does when it's stored. It's a fixed rate, regardless of the contents. Now, they may all seem to be huge, but this should mean that when the sound mixer opens them in whatever is being used to mix them, they should all line up correctly.

So my conclusion based on what I can see is that this is perfectly normal. The only thing I'd change is to export the files as 32-bit Floating Point, because now this is a pretty common transfer format. In reality though it won't make any difference to the file sizes. So hopefully, you'll be fine. If the sound mixer throws a wobbly, report back and we'll try something different!

[miriamlovessound]

Thank you for clarifying this for me and for the extra information. Now I know I am doing everything correctly at least. I will report back if he throws a "wobbly" :).

King Regards.