Ok I'm pretty much brand new to FLAC in general, as I have been using LAME and Musepack for the most part. I'm going to be making FLAC my format of choice because my new hardware player supports it and there's plenty of room (40GB).


-Tagging

What is the general consensus on how to tag an FLAC file. I know it supports Vorbis Comments but the management software for the hardware player only supports ID3 tags on FLAC files. Should I still write the Vorbis Comments in case they are ever needed - for instance transcoding to another format? Will it affect a player that can't read Vorbis Comments (even though it supports Vorbis). What version of ID3 tags should I use, should ID3v2 be avoided? Does it cause problems for playback? What programs (windows) can tag FLAC files? EAC seems to work in adding an ID3 tag, but Hellium2 can't unless the file is renamed to MP3 (and I don't know if that will cause problems when tags are added).


-Plugins

What programs (windows) can playback FLAC? I added the DLL to Winamp 2/plugins but no dice (well strange results anyway), and have heard that the Winamp 3 plugin doesn't work. The same DLL seemed to work for MediaJukebox 8 though, and of course the hardware music manager can play the files.


-Command Line Options

Should there be any command line options specified rather than the defaults? Should I use the padding option since I may be using ID3v2 tags? What is the Vorbis wrapper for?


-Transcoding

Is it possible to transcode to MP3/Musepack/Vorbis without losing the tags? Can this be done directly without coverting to WAV?


-Replaygain

Is there replaygain for FLAC? I have heard mention of Vorbisgain, but I am not familiar with Vorbis. Does it require special decoding?


Sorry for all the questions, but like I said I am a n00b, and there isn't a FAQ or anything like there is for Musepack and MP3 to at least get me started. I tried searching most of it as well, but most of these questions are too basic.

Bryn4ne

Transcoding is possible through Speek's multi frontend

http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/multi.htm

For tagging, I would do my primary tagging with vorbis comments, as they are the standard, supported method for the format itself. If your player can handle id3 tags, then add those too. The decoder should just skip over the tags without trouble. You'll have to check your player's manual to see which id3 tags you can use (v1 or v2). Case's Tag should handle all the tag types, but I've never checked myself.

Winamp 2 with in_flac.dll should work. I've used it myself. Again, if you've got id3 tags on your flac files, strip them out and double check. The plugin should be skipping them anyway though. What kind of problems are you having?

Command line options: Add in a padding block. 4k should be plenty. (-P 4096) This gives you some room to add vorbis tags or for some other minor metadata bits in the future without having to rewrite the entire file. The padding block is of no use for id3 tags though, because they sit outside of the flac stream.

The --ogg option creates an "Ogg FLAC" file, wrapping the entire flac bitstream in an Ogg wrapper (I think). Your player probably will not be able to read these.

Other than that, the defaults should be fine. You can spring for a higher compression ratio, but it won't gain you much.

There's no replaygain for flac, yet. Vorbisgain is only for ogg vorbis files. It will probably require decoder support, requiring an update for your player for proper support. (And while they're at it, maybe they can add in support for vorbis tags. )

Wow, lot's of question, I'll answer the ones I know about:


The FLAC spec does not require compliant implementations to support id3v1 or v2 tags, but currently all the tools do at some level. The reference decoder skips them and the plugins (as of 1.0.4) read both as well as the Vorbis comments and merge them all together.

I'm guessing you are referring to the PhatBox? Right now they only read id3 so I would suggest tagging with both Vorbis comments and id3.


No, all compliant decoders will either read the Vorbis comments or skip them.


It shouldn't cause problems for playback. Maybe if you have a huge id3v2 tag at the front, and in the future you burn to some high-latency format like CD and play from that, the decoder may take enough time to skip that you get an audible gap. But this is highly unlikely.


People have mentioned some already. I assume you're talking about id3 tags, and I don't really know about those. If you mean Vorbis comments, you probably know you can use command-line args to flac to set them or use metaflac to add them afterwards.


Winamp2 and any player that supports wa2 plugins. The Winamp3 plugin is broken (waiting for wa3 to stabilize again). dbPowerAmp, Apollo, PhatNoise PMM, and I think DeliPlayer.


I usually use a couple K just in case. Padding can only be used to offset FLAC metadata later; if you add an id3v2 tag later the whole file will be rewritten regardless of the padding.


It is actually an Ogg wrapper. --ogg puts the FLAC stream in an Ogg transport layer. It is currently only useful if you plan to stream over a network using Ogg-aware tools.

The plugins currently do not play Ogg FLAC but eventually they will. All hardware support is currently for native FLAC only.


Aside from programs other people have mentioned, I am working on a cross-platform transcoding GUI that will do it. Right now it can go from FLAC->Vorbis and copy the Vorbis comments verbatim.


ReplayGain support has been added and will be in the 1.0.5 release. If you encode now with 1.0.4, you will be able to compute and add the RG tags with metaflac 1.0.5 (make sure to encode now with at least 200 bytes of padding for the RG tags).

Currently the XMMS plugin supports RG; by the 1.0.5 release the Winamp2 plugin will also. Players that don't support ReplayGain will just play the file back as normal, with no gain adjustment.

Josh

Thanks to everyone for all the help! I even get help from the developer himself, I love this forum!




That's good to know, just out of curiosity what is -stdin / -stdout?



Discovered it's not a problem with the DLL, but with my version of Winamp 2. It appears broken, I will try another install. MediaJukebox 8 works just fine with DLL.



Yes, I don't know why that is since they support Ogg. Maybe using an older FLAC decoder?



Exactly, just got it today



That is good to know. Im assuming that the Phatbox won't read Vorbis Comments, but won't have problems playing files that have them? I guess I will find out soon enough anyway, but I don't know about the history of FLAC and if Vorbis comments are supported since the beginning for older decoders.



Yes, I will have to learn how to use TAG. It appears to be the only program with a frontend that can handle FLAC tags on FLAC files! Hellium2 appears to be useless on anything but MP3, others like Tag & Rename can do ID3 but no Vorbis. Is it possible for EAC to batch encode WAV to FLAC and add the Vorbis comments from the filename structure using command line options? I know how to do this on rip and encode but can't seem to get it to work on compress WAV's.

Still learning the command lines, And haven't tried metaflac yet.


Thanks again for all the help,

Bryn4ne

You won't get it to work at all with the Compress WAV function. You need to use Tag.exe to tag the files afterwards (combined tagging from filename and manual tagging).

Yes, the metadata spec is forward compatible, i.e. even older decoders know how to skip tags that are defined in the future.

One more thing, if you are about to rip a bunch of stuff for backup purposes, save the cuesheets; they may come in handy when flac 1.0.5 comes out.

Josh

Just an update -

I've recently ripped quite a few of my CD's to FLAC with the commandline :

-P 4096 -T "title=%t" -T "artist=%a" -T "album=%g" -T "date=%y" -T "tracknumber=%n" -T "genre=%m" -T "comment=Bryn4ne :: EAC .9b4, Secure with C2, accurate stream, NO disable cache, read offset correction :: FLAC 1.0.4" %s %d

I also have it setup to add ID3v1.1 and ID3v2 tags as well so that other programs can read the tags. So far I have yet to hear even a glitch form the phatnoise. Thanks so much for everyone's help in getting this right the first time.

I haven't felt the need for replaygain yet, but I will play with some MP3gained files in the mix to see how benificial it might be for me.

Thank you jcoalson for such a great program with hardware support! I'm saving my CUE sheets

Bryn4ne