This is a repost of an article I wrote early on in this blog's history. Since there continue to be frequent questions on the MATLAB newsgroup regarding processing a set of files, I thought it would be worthwhile recapping this post.
Contents
Setup
I should start a clean workspace and with no WAV-files in my blog publishing directory.
clear all delete *.wav
Problem Statement
Suppose I want to convert sounds stored in MATLAB MAT-files to files saved in WAV format for Windows. Without explictly hardcoding in the filenames, here's a way to proceed.
Collect the MAT-files Containing Sounds
matfiles = dir(fullfile(matlabroot,'toolbox','matlab','audiovideo','*.mat'))
matfiles =
6x1 struct array with fields:
name
date
bytes
isdir
datenum
Check out the Files
We can see from the length of matfiles that I have 6 MAT-files.
load(matfiles(1).name) whos
Name Size Bytes Class Attributes Fs 1x1 8 double matfiles 6x1 2576 struct y 13129x1 105032 double
Loading the data places the MAT-file contents into a structure from which I can extract the information I need and write it back out. The sound files that MATLAB ships with store the data in y and the sampling frequency in Fs. Let's look at the first signal.
N = length(y); plot((1:N)/(N*Fs),y), title(matfiles(1).name(1:end-4))
Loops over the Files
for ind = 2:length(matfiles) data = load(matfiles(ind).name); wavwrite(data.y,data.Fs,matfiles(ind).name(1:end-4)); end
Warning: Data clipped during write to file:gong Warning: Data clipped during write to file:splat Warning: Data clipped during write to file:train
What about Those Files?
dir *.wavgong.wav laughter.wav train.wav handel.wav splat.wav
Read a File Back for Verification
I'll double-check the last file I just read in and wrote out. ind is still set despite no longer being in the for loop. Let's check both the frequencies and the signals themselves.
[ywav, Fswav] = wavread(matfiles(ind).name(1:end-4)); eqFreqs = isequal(Fswav, data.Fs) datadiff = norm(ywav-data.y)
eqFreqs =
1
datadiff =
0.0010
The data stored in the WAV-file is NOT exactly the same as that stored in the MAT-file. Reading the help for wavwrite gives some insight; the data in the WAV-file, by default, is stored as 16-bit data vs. MATLAB's standard 64-bit double.
Thoughts?
Does it confuse people here that I don't worry about vectorization? Any other thoughts on this topic?
Get
the MATLAB code
Published with MATLAB® 7.6
Hi Loren,
How about this ‘one liner’ solution instead of the loop?
f=@(name) wavwrite(getfield(load(name),’y'),getfield(load(name),’Fs’),name(1:end-4))
cellfun(f,{matfiles(:).name});
Where matfiles as the same as in your post.
In this case, since you need several variables form the mat file (e.g. I have to use load twice per file) its probably less efficient, but I use a similar one liner to rescale lots of images in one go:
imgfiles=dr(’*.png’);
cellfun(@(name) imwrite(imresize(imread(name),0.5),cat(2,’sml_’,name)),{imgfiles(:).name});
Don’t know if its really better, just following the rule of thumb that as far as matlab is concerned usually less code is better…
Roy-
You can certainly use your code. It definitely is jam-packed with many MATLAB features!
It’s a little harder to read, in my opinion, but it does get the job done. I’m not sure you gain any speed either, even if you could trim out the second file loading.
In this case, I think better/worse is really an individual preference.
–Loren
Aaaaargh!
Roy, do you think you will be able to decipher these cryptic lines after two month? Or one of your colleagues?
I read a good advice for programming somewhere (I don’t remember the exact words):
Always code as if the programmer having to maintain your code were a raving lunatic who knows where you live.
Yours
Markus
yes, that’s all very nice, but matlab file processing is still very imature and not qa’ed well enough. just for example, here are some critical bugs i found in the ‘dir’ command, that have not been solved in the last 3 matlab releases:
1. the ‘dir’ command returns filesize=0 for files which contain unicode characters (such as hebrew or chinese).
2. in some timezones during DST, the datenum returned by ‘dir’ command is offset by 1 *extra* hour, in addition to the DST offset. in other words, it is (wrongly) corrected twice for DST. very annoying.
User-
Thanks for the information. Could I convince you to report it to technical support: http://www.mathworks.com/support/service_requests/contact_support.do
to report these issues? That’s the best way to get the information back to us so it can be handled appropriately. Thanks.
–Loren
Hey, awesome! I’m going to start digging through these blog entries. I’m glad I found them!!
“Always code as if the programmer having to maintain your code were a raving lunatic who knows where you live.”
So true!
Currently I’m the raving lunatic and the programmer before ran off to Egypt.
Thank you loren, this is exactly what I was looking for.