[Flac-dev] next version

[Josh Coalson]

Hi all,

For the next version I will be improving the rice coding in a way that
will change the format.  If you are building from CVS you will notice
a difference soon.  In other words, FLAC v0.4 streams and below won't
decode on new players.

The change will show up in the next release and I plan on the format
moving to a beta stage, which means from then on, any format changes
***WILL NOT*** break older streams.  I will make sure of this for at
least the reason that I will be using FLAC myself to archive around
600 CDs.

Remember, as long as FLAC is alpha (and probably even beta), don't
delete your .wav's!

Also, the next version will add a MD5 signature of the >>decoded<<
data to the metadata block.  This will strengthen FLAC's archival
use since there will be one more strong method for detecting data
corruption.

Josh

P.S. for the curious, the rice coding method used before was akin
to shorten where a separate bit is reserved for sign.  the new
method applies a simple transform to fold the signed values to
unsigned and drops the sign bit.  it's like a free 0.1% - 0.5%
increase in compression.


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