I have been waiting almost a year for this, and I am wondering if this is planned to be realized or not.

I like FLAC over other codecs, mainly for his size / decodeTime ratio, portability and hardware support. But I think that there are people -like me- that miss the ability to tag individual tracks in a single flac file with cue sheet embedded. IMHO because someone who likes the monolithic idea of having an album in an unique file, also like the possibility of having the tags within the file. So I think that an external database is not the correct solution for this problem (proposed by Josh). Also, someone who is meticulous enought to go lossless, want to tag their files.

Some months ago I started a topic asking for flac further development, mainly because I don't see it as a *complete* software (anyway, IMHO software never is perfect and always can be improved).

Please note, that by "complete" I mean that it lacks some important features. Also, I would like to add that it is the "most complete" lossless codec out there. At least from my point of view.

PS: I think I have read all topic related with this, but maybe I am missing something. If this is the case, my apologies.

Edit: I forget to mention the Matroska container solution, but I think that by using it your are losing the hardware support feature of FLAC

I'd like this too. Why don't you try writing up a standards document?

You could start with the de facto "vorbis tagging standards" specification and go from there. Good luck!

--jth

I am not so skilled... anyway I think that the FLAC developer is the person that should come to a solution.

What about storing the files on the PC as matroska-FLAC, and extract them into normal FLAC files from foobar2000 if you want to store them on the portable player ? Shouldnt take too long ?

That seems to be a possible solution. I will try it

I tried matroka, and it works perfectly in foobar. The project looks really niceee. Also, I like the idea of having all audio and video in the same kind of container.

The problem is the time I have to spend to rip a cd to mka+flac, and that the process invoves a lot of steps. I think that it would be really nice if EAC could rip directly to mka+flac, with tags and replaygain already set.

Something that I don't like is the "v" in all the tools, like mkvinfo mkvmerge, or in the icons, I think that the name should be generic. I feel like I was using a cd-player to play a dvd movie.

I have a question, the format specification is evolving, or all the work is being done in implementation? I would like my mka+flac files to be playable in the future.

I've been very interested in this also...Do you have any pointers to a step by step to do this?

I have to admit that I do not understand the tools and steps necessary to convert a directory of .flac files, cover art, and .log file to store in a matroska container. It sounds great, but I dont' know where to start.

Thanks,
Cal.

There was a thread on this not too long ago:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=19008

Perhaps it needs some modification, but it should at least get you started.

For the basic file, you only need 2 'ingredients' and one tool :

tool :

mkvmerge


ingredients :

FLAC file ( complete album ; use EAC to rip the complete album into a single WAV )
CUE sheet ( EAC will do this automatically when ripping the complete album with 'create image file and CUE' )


additional ingredients :

everything you want to attach

The only really tricky thing is the creation of a .xml chapter file from the CUE sheet. To do so, in mmg.exe ( the GUI for mkvmerge ) goto 'chapter editor' ( NOT the tab, select it from the main navigation toolbar ) and goto to 'load' .... then load your CUE sheet and create the XML chapter file from it. Now, mmg.exe will NOT automatically use this chapter XML file for the muxing of the file, you have to load it in the 'Global' tab. Then simply add your FLAC file in the main Window of mmg.exe ( the 'input' tab ), specify an output name with the extension .mka and press 'start muxing'. The result will be a playable FLAC MKA file with chapters, and FB2k will display each chapter ( = song ) in its playlist already.

If you wnat to add attachements, well, simply add as many of them as you wish in the 'attachements' tab before starting the muxing process, but dont forget to specify the MIME type for each of them.