always hangs when reading raw AIFF data files

[exiFriend]

ExifTool always hangs forever when trying to read raw AIFF data files. Is there a way to avoid this?

QuickTime reference files can refer to two data files, one for video and one for audio, and the set of three files together are a QuickTime movie:

• For the reference file, extension .mov, ExifTool parses everything, returning dozens of fields.
• For the video data file, extension .prores, ExifTool can parse the filesystem info only and returns "Unknown file type." Not great but at least I get something.
• For the audio data file, extension .aiff, ExifTool hangs and never responds even with ExifTool Version Number or File Name.

This is a format that AWS Elemental uses for its recordings.

Requested info:

• Linux 2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.centos.plus.x86_64
• ExifTool version 11.24
• command used:  exiftool 04some-live-vid-20190204T192840video.aiff
• console output:  [no output, cursor never returns]
• sample:  Files are many GB; let me know if you want to receive them.

Can you help find a way to avoid this from happening please?

[StarGeek]

Unfortunately, Phil (the author) is on vacation atm, so it may be some time before this can be looked at.

It might help if you can make a sample problem file available.

At the top of your post, there's a "Notify" button you can click to be notified by email when there's a response.

[exiFriend]

Thanks for the info about timing, and notify feature!

The files are > 30 GB so I'll wait for a response before arranging to make them available.

[Phil Harvey]

What platform is this on?  If Windows, it could be a memory issue.  If another platform, it could be an ExifTool bug.  I can read AIFF files here, so it isn't a generic problem reading AIFF's.

- Phil

[exiFriend]

Not Windows, it's Linux: CentOS 6.8 (on a system with 256GB memory!)

My regular AIFF files are readable just fine, it's only a problem with the AIFFs that are part of these 3-way combo files. I presume all the headers are in the .mov file and the .aiff/.prores files are raw binary data.

But no matter what's in them I don't think exiftool should hang forever, or apparently so - like I just looked now and this has been running nearly 12 hours at 100% CPU:
PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND                                                                                                                                           
58055 username  20   0  140m  21m 1944 R 100.0  0.0 700:04.38 exiftool

Here's the command that is running:
/usr/bin/perl -w /path/exiftool /path/20slug-20190119T210005video.aiff -G -j -api largefilesupport=1 -m -n -s -sort
but the problem exhibits itself with no command line options.

Other file info:
$ ls -lh /path/20slug-20190119T210005video.aiff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 username groupname 89G Jan 25 10:15 /path/20trump-20190119T210005video.aiff
$ ls -l /path/20slug-20190119T210005video.aiff
-rw-rw-r-- 1 username groupname 95558471058 Jan 25 10:15 /path/20slug-20190119T210005video.aiff

Do you have a big drop location you'd like me to upload some sample files? (I can create smaller ones but they'll still be big.)
$ file /path/20slug-20190119T210005video.aiff
/path/20trump-20190119T210005video.aiff: IFF data, AIFF audio

[Phil Harvey]

I don't have a drop location, but if you could upload it to a file sharing service (like dropbox maybe), then I'll take a look at it.

- Phil

[Phil Harvey]

I got the file you just sent, and ExifTool 11.52 (just released) should solve this problem.

- Phil

[exiFriend]

Yes, it does. Thanks, Phil, for putting in a fix for this!

For others who may wonder: the problem occurred with really large AIFF files (dozens of GB) when they are packed with many 0's. Now exiftool returns the basic info we need and skips the unnecessary parsing.

Thanks again!