Residual Partition aka Rice option, -r Options

[BFG]

I'm interested in getting the maximum possible compression with FLAC, regardless of encode time. According to the documentation, a setting of up to -r 16 is possible. Yet anything over -r 8 results in an error code for me. Am I missing something?

[skamp]

Add --lax to your command line.

The encoding parameters specified do not conform to the FLAC Subset and may not be streamable or playable in hardware devices. If you really understand the consequences, you can add --lax to the command-line options to encode with these parameters anyway. See http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#subset

This post has been edited by skamp: Dec 1 2012, 18:57

[Glenn Gundlach]

I'm interested in getting the maximum possible compression with FLAC, regardless of encode time. According to the documentation, a setting of up to -r 16 is possible. Yet anything over -r 8 results in an error code for me. Am I missing something?

Why waste the time to do this? Save a few KBytes on a disc? Last week I bought a 3 TB USB3 drive for $99. That's 3.3 CENTS per gigabyte. Each KByte you save will save you 3.3 MILLIONTHS of a penny. Given the way files are stored on the disc you may reap _zero_ savings - same number of clusters used. Obsessive compulsive behavior...... I'm just saying...

[Porcus]

Why waste the time to do this?

Because of a portable player that is almost full?

[skamp]

Because of a portable player that is almost full?

Use lossyFLAC

[dhromed]

Why waste the time to do this?

Proof of concept for the inquisitive mind.

[BFG]

Proof of concept for the inquisitive mind.

Exactly. And, I'm limited to 32GB on my FLAC-enabled phone

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize -r settings >8 required the --lax setting. I'll stick with 8 then.

[Makaki]

It seems it's not always the case that higher values of -r give better compression.

I used the following commands for my test:
flac.exe -V --best -f Closer.wav -> 46333044 bytes
flac.exe -V --best -r 6 -f Closer.wav -> 46333044 bytes (this was to confirm the default)
flac.exe -V --best -r 7 -f Closer.wav -> 46333405 bytes
flac.exe -V --best -r 8 -f Closer.wav -> 46333613 bytes

So maybe different files may give different results, but it's not always the case. I finally did test -r 15 with --lax:
flac.exe -V --best -r 9 --lax -f Closer.wav -> 46331566 bytes
flac.exe -V --best -r 10 --lax -f Closer.wav -> 46298363 bytes
flac.exe -V --best -r 11 --lax -f Closer.wav -> 46253224 bytes
... same results for 11-15
flac.exe -V --best -r 15 --lax -f Closer.wav -> 46253224 bytes

These did show an increase in compression with each value, I'm curious why 7 and 8 would not do the same.

This post has been edited by Makaki: Jun 4 2013, 01:14

[BFG]

Interesting results. I would suspect - though haven't tested - that varying the LPC order (-l), block size (-b) and LP coefficient search (-p or -q) would further affect the results.