FLAC 1.1.4, smaller, faster, better Options

[jcoalson]

FLAC 1.1.4 is released; see the download page and latest comparison. The windows installer for 1.1.4 is not ready yet but should be along soon. If needed you can replace the binaries from the current (1.1.3) installer with the ones in the 1.1.4 .zip on sourceforge.

The main features of this release:

• Compression improvements in all modes (-0 .. -8) with no change to the format or decrease in speed
• Speed increases for all modes, both encoding and decoding. Encoding at -8 is twice as fast as in 1.1.3
• New --warnings-as-errors option for flac
• Simpler alternative form for --picture/--import-picture-from options
• Several bug fixes (apodization locale bug, FLAC-to-FLAC transcoding, etc)
• Reduced memory requirements

The complete changelog is at http://flac.cvs.sourceforge.net/*checkout*.../changelog.html

Developers will be happy to know the API is unchanged!

[Synthetic Soul]

Very nice work Josh. Some great improvements and fast bug-fixing.

[jcoalson]

BTW thanks to you and all the others for the alpha testing! The feedback was very helpful in tuning.

for downloaders, here are the checksums:

CODE

MD5
ffe547e92417fcd90877f66412726acf  flac-1.1.4-devel-win.zip
77407be9247f8420d0e88a061917ee90  flac-1.1.4-linux-i386.tar.gz
9452a95cf9e5cc65b3e50c2bee2b6eaa  flac-1.1.4-osx-ppc.tar.gz
496d4aa3b6f74a23b5b84f8da9e65c61  flac-1.1.4-win.zip
3958cbd5b6ed8c14966792538e44223b  flac-1.1.4.tar.gz
SHA-1
bdf8dcc23000c76466b6b08a0b32faa1ea2e5b32  flac-1.1.4-devel-win.zip
6ed7490970a297ee08013d722a5580b254f008a9  flac-1.1.4-linux-i386.tar.gz
3cd3296c11f87777cf24990b78c108efd16a6320  flac-1.1.4-osx-ppc.tar.gz
92b7a20eae4aa4d12b71dd6c365015e77309209d  flac-1.1.4-win.zip
b4ce77a96d7ec89a1555b016d90ad4899e613141  flac-1.1.4.tar.gz

[.halverhahn]

Thank you for all your hard work.

[rohangc]

Thank you very much for your hard work, Josh!

@Synthetic Soul, will your batch file for transcoding from FLAC v1.1.2 to v1.1.3 work with the new v1.1.4? I was just going to move all my FLAC files to v1.1.3 when Josh released this new version! Now, I can't wait until I transcode to v1.1.4 (Thank you for your excellent work too ).

[gottkaiser]

The batch file from Synthetic Soul will work. You just have to change the version string "flacVersion=113" to "flacVersion=114".

Thanks to Josh!

[Lashiec]

WOW! So many great improvements in so little time. Thanks for the effort, Josh!

[johnsonlam]

Thanks a lot for your hard work, Josh!

I'm using FLAC v1.1.3 and feel good, and I'm so excite v1.1.4 roll out so fast, hope that the Foobar2000 and Audition filter update will be out soon.

[Alexxander]

I am surprised with the release so fast after 1.1.3. Great the dot/comma issue has been resolved.

I want to thank you and those who collaborate(d) for this fantastic compressor and all the dedicated efforts. FLAC is my preferred encoder and it will be for a long time (I think). Hopefully FLAC will become that popular that car radio manufacturers will implement it (besides Vorbis Ogg).

[Bylie]

It's fascinating to see how, over the years, development activity (and interest in general) has shifted to lossless audio codecs. I realise that this is almost only isolated to the Hydrogenaudio crowd but it might announce a more global trend now that harddisks are getting bigger and cheaper. Anyway, I'm glad I made the switch to Flac a couple of years ago! If only I could find the time to re-encode my files to 1.1.4 ... .

Josh keep up the great work!

[elpres]

Thanks for your work, Josh. It's nice too see what a big improvement you could achieve in the last couple of weeks.

Btw, just in case it went unnoticed, a possible bug report has been posted in the "General Audio" section, here.

[smok3]

tnx,

quick test 1.1.3 vs 1.1.4 (using defaults: flac.exe file.wav) on 92 small files;
1.1.4
92 File(s) 459.040.498 bytes
1.1.3
92 File(s) 472.138.921 bytes

This post has been edited by smok3: Feb 14 2007, 12:08

[fairway]

tnx,

quick test 1.1.3 vs 1.1.4 (using defaults: flac.exe file.wav) on 92 small files;
1.1.3
92 File(s) 459.040.498 bytes
1.1.4
92 File(s) 472.138.921 bytes

So flac 1.1.4 compresses worse than 1.1.3?

[Martin H]

Yes, indeed - Great job you have done on this release also, Josh

I have personally switched back to WavPack, but you forsure deserves some kudo's for your coding skills and motivation for keeping up with all this for so many years

Best regards

CU, Martin

[goodnews]

Thanks for this new release Josh!

[smok3]

fairway: nope, typo, fixed.

[fairway]

fairway: nope, typo, fixed.

Wow I would say the compression quite increased a lot! I love Flac. But let's not forget TAK

This post has been edited by fairway: Feb 14 2007, 12:32

[goodnews]

Has anyone compiled an Intel (or Universal Binary) Macintosh version of this new FLAC 1.1.4 package?

Download link please. Thanks!

[Florian]

AFAIK, ntohl() is defined in <winsock.h> (actually <winsock2.h>) on all versions of VC++, so

CODE

#if defined(_MSC_VER) && _MSC_VER <= 1200

should be

CODE

#if defined(_MSC_VER)

in bitreader.c and bitwriter.c.

[PatchWorKs]

The batch file from Synthetic Soul will work. You just have to change the version string "flacVersion=113" to "flacVersion=114".

I tried but it won't.

Note that i have OGG-flacs.

[windmiller]

Fantastic, what a great year this has been for Flac users, year as in 12 months, not calendar year

[smok3]

and flac -5 vs flac -8 on set of short 70 samples (flac 1.1.4):

70 short files
---------------------------
flac5\ 521.737.686 | render time ~3 minutes
flac8\ 516.297.252 | render time ~7 minutes
orig\ 1.502.251.352

edit, optimfrog v4.600ex defaults
frog\ 480.359.971 | render time ~9 minutes

(render times are really just aprox., decoding speed not tested)

This post has been edited by smok3: Feb 14 2007, 14:13

[le_canz]

Thanks for your great work Josh

[probedb]

Fantastic work Just after I reencoded to 1.1.3 too At least I can run a full reencode now to 1.1.4 as none of my files are encoded to this yet.

[madorangepanda]

Thanks for the great work.
I'm getting double the speed for -8 encoding now.
One odd thing is that a few files on one of my albums have ended up slightly larger, though the album had an overall decrease so that's allright.