Forum

EMebane · Joined: Apr 15, 2019 Posts: 130

Is the XDF format BE exports a standard format? I've tried opening a recording with a couple of XDF readers and they both didn't like the file format and wouldn't open it (mnelab and sigviewer). Any tips for opening and viewing XDF files in another app?

jarek · Joined: Oct 22, 2007 Posts: 1093

Probably not. The "XDF" word is used with many unrelated projects.

If you need to process in external apps use EDFFileWriter. The EDF format is much more popular. It has a limitation, it can only save 16bit integers (XDF uses 32bit float values), so make sure you configure this properly. The advantage is there are many other apps which can read it.

The XDF format in BioEra is open source. See the manual for details about specification.

EMebane · Joined: Apr 15, 2019 Posts: 130

Yeah, I found EDFWriter as an option and I'll use it in my designs. To view the older XDF files I made a BE format converter design that plays XDF and Writes EDF. It works. :)

jarek · Joined: Oct 22, 2007 Posts: 1093

Yes, this is a good way. It may be safer to use XDF by default because its 32bit float range can include almost anything. Not just the device signals but also some calculated numbers which often are outside of 16 bit integers, and when they do it may be hard to tell later if that (truncation or precision loss) happened.