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Setagayan Author

Level 1

4 points

Voice Memos: The content of my Voice Memo disappeared

I set my iPhone in Airplane Mode (to not have calls coming in) while recording a long business meeting using the new Voice Memos application under iPhone OS 3.0 with my one year old 3G. When I stopped recording the counter showed that I had been recording for about 3 hours and 13 minutes.
I labeled my recording “Meeting” and it shows that my recording started 26/06/2009 at 13:30 (1:30PM).
I was looking forward to become able to transfer my recording to my iMac or MacBook PRO.
However, next time I opened the Voice Memos application and find my file correctly labeled Meeting 26/06/2009 13:30, the counter at the right (in front of the error) simply says 0s. Trying to play anything back produces no result, because the data seems to be gone (despite that the file name and date/time remains).
Do anyone here have an idea of what could have happened? Maybe I ran into some kind of maximum recording time limit? But even so, I would have expected the recording to remain up to that time limit.
As it is, the entire exercise was useless and ended in big disappointment.
My confidence in this application is currently zero.

iPhone 3G/3G S, iPhone OS 3.0

Posted on Jun 28, 2009 6:19 AM

Best reply

Setagayan Author

Level 1

4 points

Posted on Jun 29, 2009 5:38 AM

Since, so far,no one has joined this topic, and also since I found a solution myself in the meantime, I felt it would be educational to share my experience.

Over this weekend, my cell phone provider (SoftBank Japan) had my new 3G S 32GB ready, so I transferred to the new model which really is faster, smoother, more capable. It also renders web pages better among many other minor and major improvements in performance as well as increased capabilities (not the least video).

One problem with switching iPhone is that Notes and SMS messages do not get transferred via iTunes to the new phone, so I searched the internet for advice on methods and tools. This lead me to an application called "Phone View" by www.ecamm.com.

After connecting the old iPhone (with SIM removed) to my iMac, the Phone View application lets me look at my iPhone as a DISK (I selected the "Show Entire Disk (Advanced Mode) option under Preferences). There is a sub-folder called "Recordings", and inside here I found two files 20090626 133024.m4a and 20090626 133024.mov. Clicking on each file made them download to my documents folder on the iMac.

Disappointingly, the .m4a version of the file seems to be non-functional, so any clicking or even dragging it into iTunes, or even trying to open it within the QuickTime application provided no result. However, clicking the .mov file opened QuickTime and audio playback started immediately.

The file-size was 426 MB of the entire 3 hours and 13 minutes long voice memo recording. I had the iPhone oriented upside down in my shirt pocket throughout the recording, and each of the 4 voices in the room are recorded extremely clearly so it is possible to hear every word that was spoken.

For whatever reason the original .m4a file of "Voice Memos" have broken, while miraculously a .mov file has been created in its place.

I have no explanation for why this happened, and I am sure that if I had not purchased the "Phone View" application, I would never had found out what happened, nor had I been able to retrieve the audio.

Actually the main reason for acquiring "Phone View" was to transfer my "Notes" and also "SMS" messages from the old iPhone to the new 3G S. For whatever reason I have not yet been successful in transferring this data, while instead I found the lost voice memo recording.

I hope that my story will help someone who happens to experience a similar problem.

However, I am still interested to hear if anyone can provide an explanation to what happened 😉

View in context

19 replies

sourouge

Level 1

4 points

Oct 11, 2009 9:27 AM in response to Setagayan

Thank you for your post... i was able to find the mov file and the m4a file of 174 mg but the problem is that the mov file only plays a recording of 12 sec.... i tried to convert the 2 files impossible... Anyone has a clue... ur help guys is much appreciated
Serge

Oct 14, 2009 9:35 PM in response to Setagayan

Wow, I thought I was great at web research, but I spent a half hour sweating over trying to find a way to trafer a 2 hour recording I just made of a very important meeting, from iphone to iMac, when I stumbled into Setagayan. My friend, you are brilliant, AND very considerate of your fellow man, to post the solution without anyone even replying to you in the beginning! EXCELLENT Work. Well done!

For the record, the demo version of PhoneView works great on an iPhone 3GS and Intel iMac running 10.5.8.

Thank you so much!

Phil.

Kill_It

Level 1

0 points

Oct 16, 2009 8:27 PM in response to Setagayan

thanks very much i had recorded about 12 lectures and 2 weren't working. Thanks to everyone for keeping this topic going and to the original poster , i used the reincubate program since i'm a pc user and it worked to perfection.

thanks again

Nov 19, 2009 1:24 PM in response to Setagayan

I certainly hope someone at Apple is working on this problem.

Currently, I have 8 voice memos on my phone that will not sync with iTunes no matter what I do.

PhoneView here I come.

This problem has been happening since the voice memo application came out, you would think that Apple would have fixed it already!

Voice Memos: The content of my Voice Memo disappeared