[Flac-dev] FLAC codec in OS X Leopard

[Stephen F. Booth]

I upgraded to Leopard (version 10.5 of OS X) a few weeks ago.   
Although I was a bit disappointed, but not surprised, to see that FLAC  
support isn't built natively into the OS, I was very happy to notice  
recently that Apple ships source code for a FLAC encoder and decoder  
codec component in /Developer/Examples/CoreAudio/AudioCodecs/ 
FLAC.xcodeproj.

All that is necessary to build the codec is to download the latest  
FLAC source code, copy it into the project tree, #define VERSION  
appropriately, and build it.  Once installed this allows Core Audio  
aware applications to encode and decode FLAC in a CAF container.  I  
think this is superior to the XiphQT components because it doesn't  
require any external frameworks to be installed, and it allows  
encoding.  I've posted a screenshot of QuickTime's standard audio  
configuration dialog at http://img49.imageshack.us/img49/5231/picture1uz9.png 
  showing the available FLAC encoding options.

I think a great next step would be to write an AudioFileComponent to  
add native FLAC file support.  An AudioFile component coupled with the  
FLAC codec component would automatically bring native FLAC support to  
any Core Audio-enabled application!

Apple's license for the sample code allows it to be distributed in  
source or binary form- it would be trivial to package up the compiled  
codec for redistribution, if people feel that's something worth doing.

Stephen