Hello ,
Both Wavpack and K3b are very popular linux packages. Ape and other lossless extensions works well for K3b ,but there is nothing about wavpack. One have to convert manually from wv to wav before using K3b. The WavPack plugin should be a must have K3b feature. I'm intrigued about this lack : is there a technical problem ? a lack of volunteers to code (as both packages are opensource , it should not be a problem) ? or a legal one ?
Dar Li

Thanks for letting me know about K3b, it looks like a nice program. There is no legal issue with adding WavPack support and I certainly can't imagine any technical reason that it could not be made to use libwavpack. It's probably just that the developers are not aware of (or like) WavPack. Otherwise, the libwavpack API is easy enough to use that support could be added in a day or two by one of the K3b developers (or anyone else who was already building and running K3b and was familiar with the internals).

Unfortunately this is the same situation with several other Linux applications (Audacity comes to mind). The best thing for WavPack users to do is make sure that the applications' developers hear about WavPack and all the great advantages it offers!

BTW, I notice that K3b can use ffmpeg for audio decoding. Since recent versions of ffmpeg can decode lossless WavPack files, that might be a workable solution.

David

um... wavpack IS supported on k3b by using the ffmpeg plugin

i use it a lot, actually

the rarewares/debian k3b packages come ready to rumble!


later

Oh that's great, thanks!

One of the things on my list is to add lossy WavPack support to ffmpeg, but since ffmpeg couldn't handle the correction files anyway it might not make a lot of sense for a CD burner app. Using libwavpack directly makes correction file support easy.

Dear xmixahlx , can you share some details of how to use wavpack via ffmpeg in k3b ?

I installed a fresh svn version of ffmpeg , test it with a .wv file (with ffplay) .
Also , i do have a svn version of K3b.
In the plugin part of k3b settings , the ffmpeg section states the following :
"decoding moducle to decode wma files" , there are no options for wavpack.
When i try opening a .wv file , k3b fail , i have only a message suggesting to convert first to a k3b supported format.

I know it may sound more like a k3b specific issue , but i keep the thread as it was your suggestion to use ffmpeg

i use debian official (unstable) reps, marillat reps, and my own reps to add full support for the multimedia packages at rarewares.

if you are doing this on your own you'll need to know how to resolve dependencies for the various elements of k3b (and any other software).

here is the configure line i use for the k3b packages at rarewares/debian: (you can see options with ./configure --help)



you want --enable-ffmpeg-all-codecs

this adds support for ALL of the formats supported by ffmpeg, listed here:
http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/ffmpeg-doc.html#SEC25

obviously you want to have ffmpeg configured correctly, too.




later

Tank you xmixahlx, you made my day !
I'm using gentoo with the latest bleeding-edge libraries, so i was pretty sure it was not a ffmpeg problem . Based on your tips , i checked the k3b ebuild file ( containing the compile specs).
Everything worked fine , by adding --enable-ffmpeg-all-codecs into the ebuild , i was able to have a brand new , wavpack-enabled k3b.
I will contact gentoo k3b maintainer , this feature should be a standard one.

you can also use any encoder that supports stdin, in k3b, with the external encoder plugin

yeah for the encoder i have this setup for wavpack:

wavpack -mhx3 -w "Artist=%a" -w "Album=%m" -w "Track=%n" -w "Title=%t" -w "Year=%y" - -o %f

(enable swap & wave, too)


later