FLACCL: CUDA-enabled FLAC encoder by Gregory S. Chudov (prev. FlaCuda), Formerly "lossless codecs and CUDA" Options

[moosehunter]

Will there be support for tags in any upcoming versions similar to the way flac copies any tags or images in files that it encodes from flac to flac?

[Case]

I just installed Nvidia's GTX Titan graphics card and wanted to benchmark FlacCL speeds on it. Unfortunately display driver keeps dying with error message "Display driver nvlddmkm stopped responding and has successfully recovered." I tried both WHQL 314.09 and beta 314.14 drivers with the same sad result. Does anyone know if the card is supposed to behave better with this program?

[Gregory S. Chudo...]

Ouch. That's very unfortunate.

[Wombat]

I can´t help you but the 314.09 drivers work fine here with a 660Ti and flacCL.
Did you try toggle the Titan only setting in the Nvidia Control Panel for “CUDA – Double Precision” ? maybe this changes something.

[bennetng]

HD5750 512MB@stock speed, i3-540@3.8Ghz, 8GB RAM
win7x64, Catalyst 13.1
Default setting without any switch

-8: 371.25x; 546284393 bytes in 00:00:12.0086868 seconds;
-7: 656.94x; 546611605 bytes in 00:00:06.7863882 seconds;
-6: 886.29x; 546635330 bytes in 00:00:05.0302878 seconds;

[Case]

After I enabled the double precision option I no longer had display driver resetting. Not even after I disabled the option again.
Attached is a fresh comparison between CPU, GTX 680 and GTX Titan. Option --cpu-threads 4 seemed to produce highest speeds on all compression levels. GTX 680 was faster with --slow-gpu option starting from compression level 4.

[Gregory S. Chudo...]

2000x compression speed - that's more like it

Thanks again!

[It's me Selur]

Hi, I'm trying to use flac 0.4 from (http://audiophilesoft.ru/load/coders_utils/flaccl/7-1-0-68 ; also tried latest CueTools version) with ffmpeg&sox, when I call:

CODE

"G:\Hybrid\ffmpeg.exe" -y -analyzeduration 500000000 -threads 8 -v -10 -i "H:\Temp\iId_2_aid_1_01_19_56_0910_05.mp3" -ac 2 -acodec pcm_s16le -f wav - |  "G:\Hybrid\CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe" -5 -o "H:\Output\iId_2_aid_1_01_19_56_091005.flac" -

the output is properly produced, but if I add sox to the mix:

CODE

"G:\Hybrid\ffmpeg.exe" -y -analyzeduration 500000000 -threads 8 -v -10 -i "H:\Temp\iId_1_aid_1_01_11_20_6710_01.mp3" -ac 2 -f sox - | "G:\Hybrid\sox.exe" --multi-threaded --temp "H:\Temp" --buffer 524288 -t sox - -b 16 -t wavpcm - | "G:\Hybrid\CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe" -5 -o "H:\Output\iId_1_aid_1_01_11_20_671001.flac" -

it aborts with

Error : Incomplete file read.

I suspect this might be due to a warning sox throws:
"WARN wav: Length in output .wav header will be wrong since can't seek to fix it"
(if I create a temporal file and reencode it, it works without a problem)

Does anyone know what really is the problem and how to fix it?
I don't want to:
a. skip sox, since I'd like to do some additional filtering through sox
or
b. create a temporal wav file

Is there some sort of '--ignore-length' like NeroAacEnc and other encoders have, which I'm missing?

Cu Selur

[It's me Selur]

added a feature request over at https://sourceforge.net/p/cuetoolsnet/bugs/17/

[IgorC]

The compression level -6 is very attractive imo. The difference between -6 and -11 is quite small (0.1-0.15%) but -6 preset has a bit higher decoding speed, the same as FLAC -8.

Here getting ~630x encoding speed with FLACCL 0.4 -6 on 3770k (with its iGPU HD4000) and still a bit better compression (0.1-0.15%) than very slow FLAC -8 -A tukey(0.5) -A flattop.

[GeorgiusT]

Hello,

when I try to encode a 24/96 FLAC in foobar2000 I get following error message:

1 out of 1 tracks converted with major problems.

Source: "E:\Musik\Metallica [vinyl 24 bit]\09-Garage Inc\13.flac"
An error occurred while writing to file (The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 1 (0x00000001); please re-check parameters) : "E:\Musik\Metallica [vinyl 24 bit]\09-Garage Inc\The Small Hours_test.flac"
Additional information:
Encoder stream format: 96000Hz / 2ch / 24bps
Command line: "C:\Program Files (x86)\foobar2000\converters\CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe" -q -8 --fast-gpu --cpu-threads 4 -o "The Small Hours_test.flac"
Working folder: E:\Musik\Metallica [vinyl 24 bit]\09-Garage Inc\

Conversion failed: The encoder has terminated prematurely with code 1 (0x00000001); please re-check parameters

Does somebody know whats the problem? I also tried different command line options with no success.

My GPU is GeForce 660, driver version 320.14, OS Win 7 x64.

[lvqcl]

Add "- " in front of your command line

[db1989]

To elaborate: your line currently does not tell FLAC where to get the input from. Quite a major omission! The hyphen tells it to take the audio piped from standard input, which is how foobar2000 sends it.

[Wombat]

Only the later flacCL versions do support higher samplerates but this is still buggy and 88.2kHz for example even doesn´t work at all yet. I guess using flacCL at this point with anything different as 44.1kHz material is not safe. I reported problems with 96kHz files that encode and verify fine but can´t be decoded with flac.exe
Grigory is at it and we just have to wait.

[GeorgiusT]

I have FLACCL v 0.4.7. Added %s to command line and an resampler to 96000 Hz, seems to work now.

[mzso]

I the simplest form in foobar with CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe:

CODE

-8 -o %d %s

I get a windows app crash message and mini dump files for CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe:.

So something clearly is wrong. But I have no clue what.

The same seems to be working manually from CLI.

This post has been edited by mzso: Jun 13 2013, 17:25

[Gregory S. Chudo...]

First of all, try more recent version: http://www.cuetools.net/install/CUETools_2.1.5.zip

The simplest form would be

CODE

--lax -9 -o %d -

[mzso]

First of all, try more recent version: http://www.cuetools.net/install/CUETools_2.1.5.zip

The simplest form would be

CODE

--lax -9 -o %d -

Yeah I corrected it to -8 but copied the wrong thing here.
Anyway it seems the problem was that it's not a static build and I didn't copy the dll-s. Do I need all of them?

This post has been edited by mzso: Jun 13 2013, 17:34

[Wombat]

I have FLACCL v 0.4.7. Added %s to command line and an resampler to 96000 Hz, seems to work now.

There never was a version 0.4.7

In the latest version from 11.06.2013 flacCL is running fine with samplerates up to 96kHz, others i didn´t try.

And again a BIG thanks to Grigory! The speed it crunches these big files is simply stunning!

[mzso]

First of all, try more recent version: http://www.cuetools.net/install/CUETools_2.1.5.zip

The simplest form would be

CODE

--lax -9 -o %d -

Forgot to mention that I already used that version. Is it based upon libflac (If yes is it on the nevest one?) or is it a totally separate encoder btw?

Is there any point in specifying opencl-platform? (for my Nvidia card) The encoder doesn't tell what it uses during the encode.


It seems to use 100% cpu but very little gpu. Is that normal? Also I can't set --opencl-platform to 'NVIDIA CUDA', because it doesn't work.

This post has been edited by mzso: Jun 13 2013, 18:15

[Wombat]

Anyway it seems the problem was that it's not a static build and I didn't copy the dll-s. Do I need all of them?

These files in the same folder should work: CUETools.Codecs.FLACCL.dll, CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe, CUETools.Codecs.FLAKE.dll, CUETools.Codecs.dll, OpenCLNet.dll

Is there any point in specifying opencl-platform? (for my Nvidia card) The encoder doesn't tell what it uses during the encode.

My Nvidia Card was always detected correctly without any further settings for me to do. You may check with GPU-Z if your GPU is installed correctly and supports OpenCL.

It seems to use 100% cpu but very little gpu. Is that normal? Also I can't set --opencl-platform to 'NVIDIA CUDA', because it doesn't work.

On modern GPUs the bottlenek is most likely elsewhere, seldom the graphics card itself. So it depends on the system what is taxed most.

[Gregory S. Chudo...]

Also I can't set --opencl-platform to 'NVIDIA CUDA', because it doesn't work.

You are probably using single quotes, that only works on UNIX. In windows shell you have to use double quotes: "NVIDIA CUDA"

[Wombat]

These files in the same folder should work: CUETools.Codecs.FLACCL.dll, CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe, CUETools.Codecs.FLAKE.dll, CUETools.Codecs.dll, OpenCLNet.dll

I´m really sorry to have forgotten the file flac.cl you also need.

[mzso]

These files in the same folder should work: CUETools.Codecs.FLACCL.dll, CUETools.FLACCL.cmd.exe, CUETools.Codecs.FLAKE.dll, CUETools.Codecs.dll, OpenCLNet.dll

I´m really sorry to have forgotten the file flac.cl you also need.

That's a lot of files. I'll just keep it separate from the foobar folder. Would cause too much clutter.

[Atak_Snajpera]

Feature request
1) support for wave64. It was recently added in plain FLAC encoder.
2) support for multiple input files chunk1.w64 chunk2.w64 chunk3.w64. Encoder should join them on fly.

This post has been edited by Atak_Snajpera: Jun 15 2013, 20:11