FLAC 1.1.4, smaller, faster, better Options

[jcoalson]

Just wondering... If your collection is already archived in an earlier version of FLAC, is there any reason to transcode to a newer version, other than to save some additional space?

from 1.1.3->1.1.4 it's just compression improvements. from 1.1.2->1.1.3 support for album art was added.

does this new version fixes this bug here:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....1287&hl=bug

no. I wouldn't call it a bug either, in that case flac is being passed an invalid wave file.

How does flake compares to FLAC? Is flake format compatible to FLAC (I mean will FLAC play flake encoded files)?

flake is supposed to generate valid FLAC but it's still alpha and we have found format-related bugs. it's getting better but I would not use it for archiving yet.

I would like to know how such a large decrease in encoding time was achieved (different data structure used, etc)

actually for -8, it was just a better algorithm for estimating encoded residual sizes.

Josh

[Demetris]

Congratulations! The speed-up in -8 is impressive!

And thanks for the apodization fix. :-)

[paulgj]

Thanks for the update. Also I was wondering if this update would allow Rockbox FLAC decoding to burn less power? (I use Rockbox to play FLAC 1.1.2 -5 files on an iPod Video)

Also is it true that there is no difference in the overhead required to decode from a -5 or a -8 compressed file?

Thanks!

[Firon]

Only if they integrate the 1.1.4 decoding code into Rockbox.
And there's no real difference in decoding speed between the compression levels.

[goodnews]

Has 1.1.4 been tested well enough via a test suite and by users (i.e no known bugs) to use in production/archiving of master audio data?

This post has been edited by goodnews: Feb 16 2007, 03:32

[Firon]

The best thing you can do is make it verify it and compare the MD5 of the audio data with the original audio data.

[whr]

I was transcoding from flac 1.1.2 to flac 1.1.4 using foobar converter, and noticed that while in most cases the size of the files got smaller, in other cases it grew.

As an example:

Various Artists - SUPER EUROBEAT presents Initial D Fourth Stage D Non-Stop Selection
compressed with flac 1.1.2
607.684.260 byte
compressed with flac 1.1.4
608.449.746 byte

It's rare that the flac 1.1.4 transcode ends up bigger than the flac 1.1.2 encode and for now it only happened for albums encoded as single tracks and not for albums encoded as an image (many tracks get bigger, while others get smaller) and all were encoded with the -8 setting.

This post has been edited by whr: Feb 16 2007, 07:07

[mjpartyboy]

Thanks for your time and effort and the great work!

[Insolent]

Re-encoding now.

[paulgj]

Re-encoding now.

Just curious, what are you using to re-encode? I can't decide between Foobar and Synthetic Soul's .bat file mentioned earlier.

[probedb]

Re-encoding now.

Just curious, what are you using to re-encode? I can't decide between Foobar and Synthetic Soul's .bat file mentioned earlier.

I use Synthetic Soul's .bat file with the additions he mentioned. Works well I'm also reencoding now...

[Johncan]

I am using Omni Encoder and Flac 1.1.4 to recode. It works well. I just copied the new 1.1.4 flac.exe over the 1.1.3 one in Omni.

John

[Teknojnky]

is this a bug?

CODE

J:\Temp>flac -t test1.flac

flac 1.1.4, Copyright © 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac' for details.

test1.flac: ok

J:\Temp>

file tests OK

CODE

J:\Temp>flac -V test1.flac -o test2.flac

flac 1.1.4, Copyright © 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac' for details.

ERROR: input file test1.flac has an ID3v2 tag

J:\Temp>

File fails to encode, but tested OK.

CODE

J:\Temp>flac -V -F -f test1.flac -o test2.flac

flac 1.1.4, Copyright © 2000,2001,2002,2003,2004,2005,2006,2007 Josh Coalson
flac comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are
welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions. Type `flac' for details.

ERROR: input file test1.flac has an ID3v2 tag

J:\Temp>

even forcing it fails.

I was able to remove the offending tag with mp3 tag studio 3.05, and it encoded fine then.

I thought for sure that 1.1.4 alpha was able to force encode through this problem but maybe I'm wrong.

[goodnews]

FLAC filter updated for Adobe Audition/Cool Edit/Cool Edit Pro to include support for reading and writing of FLAC 1.1.4 format files. Thread with changelog and download link is located here.

This post has been edited by goodnews: Feb 17 2007, 14:48

[jamesbaud]

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

Download link please. Thanks!

Is this what you mean?

http://www.rarewares.org/lossless.html

Thank John33!

[goodnews]

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

Download link please. Thanks!

Is this what you mean?

http://www.rarewares.org/lossless.html

Thank John33!

I see a WavPack version on Rarewares for Macintosh, but not an Intel Macintosh version listed there for FLAC 1.1.4. I checked there first but saw nothing, that is why I asked here.

[Khaine]

Thanks for the great new release :-)

[sketchy_c]

Converted my FLAC filess to 1.1.4 from 1.1.3 over the weekend (-8 to -8), and the ones I reviewed showed a decrease in size of a few percentage points. Thanks for the update, and great work!!!

This post has been edited by sketchy_c: Feb 19 2007, 14:44

[jcoalson]

is this a bug?
...
I thought for sure that 1.1.4 alpha was able to force encode through this problem but maybe I'm wrong.

no, this came up before somewhere else and I gave the long explanation. anyway id3 on flac files is going to get less and less support as time goes on.

[user]

oh, I just visited flac sourceforge page, and found out, that the download links for the flac windows installer link to flac1.1.3b , still.

edit: still after edit written in italics bold, so that it should be clearer, that I ask after 1 week of 1.1.4 being public, that the installer is updated for the broad public also. Obviously the techie HA guys know howto use and replace 1.1.3 against 1.1.4, but the JoeAverage out there might download the installer with high probability and get an outdated 1.1.3 with a locale-dot/comma bug. Especially because of this, the 1.1.3 versions should be replaced by 1.1.4 everywhere it is possible. It simply doesn't look nice or proper, if on 1 page is 1.1.4 and on other (even main download location), you get 1.1.3., and the news tell that 1.1.3 would be newest..
Nowhere in this topic is said why the installer isn#t updated yet, jcoalson said only in 1st post, that it isn#t updated yet.

Also the News could be updated, maybe even before the installer package
Currently latest:
news
27-Nov-2006 :
FLAC 1.1.3 released

edited/added also

my quick test:

Encoding Helge Schneider's Katzeklo song 3.05 min.s (yeah, the HA cat lovers ) to Case's flac 1.1.3 (used because of the locale dot comma bug) and to flac 1.1.4 , on windows (xp).
from wav 44.1/16 to flac 1.1.4 -8 -V and to flac 1.1.3case -8 -V
size advantage ca. 0.3% , very nice, (this song compresses to ca. 0.6 of 1400kbit/s raw wave size)
speed advantage even more nice on P3-800 MHz 1.1.3Case took 80s , 1.1.4 took 40s, so that the speedup is really great !!!
(Speed was measured 2-3 times each encoder and averaged.)


big edit 2007-02-23:
I found in flac sub-forum a topic http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=52863 referring to the sourceforge flac homepage problem. Obviously, it is due to sourceforge, that it is down, that no updates can be made to that page

This post has been edited by user: Feb 23 2007, 13:06

[probedb]

If you read the thread it's been explained why it's not been updated.

[clintb]

Using Foobar 0.9.4.2 and a custom converter set for FLAC 1.1.4, this works for me.

CODE

-s -8 - -o %d

Ok, where'd the post I was responding run off to?

This post has been edited by clintb: Feb 22 2007, 20:49

[paulgj]

Using Foobar 0.9.4.2 and a custom converter set for FLAC 1.1.4, this works for me.

CODE

-s -8 - -o %d

Ok, where'd the post I was responding run off to?

Hiya,

you may want to change the

CODE

-s -8 - -o %d

line to

CODE

-s -8 %s -o %d

as I have heard there are some issue with Foobar inserting too many seek points into piped FLAC conversions. See the topic here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=41287

[wraithdu]

Two quesitons. First regarding this post -

Using Foobar 0.9.4.2 and a custom converter set for FLAC 1.1.4, this works for me.

CODE

-s -8 - -o %d

Ok, where'd the post I was responding run off to?

Hiya,

you may want to change the

CODE

-s -8 - -o %d

line to

CODE

-s -8 %s -o %d

as I have heard there are some issue with Foobar inserting too many seek points into piped FLAC conversions. See the topic here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=41287

Does the coverter have this bug if the custom setting is NOT used? IE if you just choose FLAC from the built in settings?

Second, has anyone had any problems with flac 1.1.4 replaygain tags not being read in foobar? I used REACT2 today to create an album image and had flac scan for replaygain. I know it did cause it warned me that it would create some padding even if --no-padding was used. After I loaded the file into foobar, the RG tags were nowhere to be found. However there was a tag citing the REPLAY_GAIN_REFERENCE was 89 db. So either the tags weren't written (although it seems like they were), or fb2k can't read them. Ideas?

This post has been edited by wraithdu: Feb 25 2007, 02:33

[Martin H]

The four de-facto RG tags isn't shown in fb2k's "Properties" dialog, but fb2k still parses them and lists the gain and peak values in the "Properties" section of the "Properties" dialog. FLAC's ReplayGain implementation also sets a "REPLAYGAIN_REFERENCE_LOUDNESS" tag in addition to the four de-factor RG tags and since fb2k dosen't recognice that tag as being a RG tag, then that tag is also listed among the other non-RG tags in the "Metadata" section of the "Properties" dialog.

This post has been edited by Martin H: Feb 25 2007, 03:15