I tried encoding two very large wave files and they both quit at 2 hours and 15 min. Foobar console popped up and just said error converting.

[cough] what settings did you use? [/cough]


EDIT:
Sounds like you have a stability problem with your PC, i just encoded the audio from LOTR two towers DVD using 3.97a10 with --preset fast standard, and it encoded all the way to the end with out problems.

maybe it's time for a PRIME?

2GB file size limitation?

After the first one failed I then encoded it with FHG fastenc with no problem. I don't think they're over 2g in size. With 3.97 I was using --preset fast medium.

I just decoded the first flac to wave (Bizet's Carmen). It's 1.55g.

I meant input filesize. Are you input wav files bigger than 2GB?

edit: ok, you checked wav file size.
Does the same error happens if you do not use foobar to perform the task?

I'll try it from the command line.

It worked from the command line. Must be a Foobar problem.

I just tried again with Foobar and it failed at the exact same place-2:15:15 I guess this thread should be moved to the Foobar forum?

I might be completely wrong, but this might be a problem with LAME not handling long streams from standard input.

foobar2000 passes 24bit samples to LAME.exe by default through standard input.

Yup, conversion works if you make foobar2000 pass 16bit samples.

I've got the box checked in the diskwriter settings that says 'Keep lossless sources at original bit depth'. Is there another setting?

I think I see, should I change highest BPS in encoder setting to 16?

That's only for lossless output, if I'm not mistaken. If you use the commandline-encoder presets, you can click on [Edit] to change "Highest BPS mode supported" to 16.

Thanks! (I edited the above before I saw your answer) So the only downside would be if I'm using the dsp (replay gain & limiter). Should I dither the output?

With lossy encoding, highest possible bit depth is used to preserve resolution when e.g. replaygain is used. As a side effect, limitations of WAV format kick in earlier.
I could add special hack to raise size limit to 4GB but it would no longer be compliant (RIFF chunk sizes are supposed not to exceed 0x7FFFFFFF as far as I know).

Just maybe have it pop up an error before starting then if the wav is too large?