The Future of FLAC Options

[spoon]

From January 2012 FLAC is being maintained by Erik de Castro Lopo under the auspices of the Xiph.org Foundation.

Taken from

https://github.com/crrodriguez/flac

...but I guess this guy does not have the access to flac.soureforge.net

From an Email I sent off to Eric,

Mr Spoon wrote:

> We have been trying to find what has happened to Josh for quite a while

He's fine, just not working on FLAC anymore.

> now, we came across https://github.com/crrodriguez/flac which suggests =
> you have taken over FLAC management? is this correct?

Yes it is.

> have you taken over flac.sf.net also?

We are in the process of moving the web pages to:

http://xiph.rog/flac/

Once that is done, we will ask Josh to set up a HTTP redirect on the
flac.sf.net web site.

Cheers,
Erik

So it seems Josh is no longer working on FLAC, I am concerned that merging into xiph might not be best for FLACs future...(it is nothing personal against xiph), FLAC has a window of opportunity to become the defacto lossless codec, but without strong management it will not (and in 4 years everything will be in Apple lossless, or some such)

I propose that a team from HA is put together and then propose to xiph that such a team take over FLACs stewardship. If you are interested put your name forward, and if the team is strong, we can propose.

This post has been edited by spoon: Aug 31 2012, 21:50

[yourlord]

Is there a reason to question Eric's stewardship?

FLAC has been under the Xiph umbrella for quite some time. All that is changing is the lead maintainer and the site hosting the FLAC pages and code.

As long as the code remains open for bug fixes and enhancements I don't see a need for people on HA to take over. Those same people are free to work on or promote FLAC without taking control from Xiph.

[mudlord]

Is there a reason to question Eric's stewardship?

Yes.

Knowing Fidel Castro Loco's attitude towards Windows and anything MS in particular, Microsoft and Apple won't be nudged towards supporting FLAC anytime soon.
That must change if FLAC is to remain competitive.

Which means fixes like Wave64 won't happen since Fidel is against any MS creation, including any extended PCM formats devised by MS.

This post has been edited by mudlord: Sep 1 2012, 09:33

[BFG]

I find this thread to be a fascinating look into a codec that I'm just starting to use (yes, I'm a latecomer).

So here's a simpleton's question: am I correct that Sourceforge still contains the latest FLAC binaries? And that there are no "variant" versions available (akin to halb27's -V0+ variant of LAME)?

[tuffy]

So here's a simpleton's question: am I correct that Sourceforge still contains the latest FLAC binaries? And that there are no "variant" versions available (akin to halb27's -V0+ variant of LAME)?

Yes, the official reference binaries are still hosted on SourceForge. But there are different FLAC encoders out there using different approaches to encoding files - typically for better encoding speed, better compression, etc. However, since they're all lossless, the actual data stored is bit-for-bit identical no matter what approach is used. So the encoder doesn't really matter.

[Porcus]

However, since they're all lossless, the actual data stored is bit-for-bit identical no matter what approach is used. So the encoder doesn't really matter.

Should be pointed out that not all FLAC files are streamable, though. The safe option is to use the reference encoder (and avoid the --lax command-line option ... I guess beginners will be more than satisfied with -8).