[Flac-dev] Support for CAF in flac command-line?

[Michael Crawford]

On Sun, Oct 12, 2008 at 7:26 PM, Brian Willoughby <brianw at sounds.wa.com> wrote:
> Is anyone here potentially up to the task of adding support for CAF
> (the CoreAudio Format) into the flac command-line?  This would
> present minimal difficulty under OSX, due to the presence of the
> CoreAudio API, but the real challenge would be to support CAF on Unix
> and Windows - everywhere that flac is now available.

I expect I could do it as part of my work on Ogg Frog:

http://www.oggfrog.com/free-music-software

In the short term, I would do it by accessing the QuickTime APIs -
which *are* available on Windows, if you install either iTunes or
QuickTime for Windows.  (The iTunes install includes QuickTime.)

In the long term, I could write a codec for it that would be
straightforward to integrate into the flac command-line tool.  That
would allow its use on UNIX.

HOWEVER!

Is the CoreAudio file format or its associated algorithms patented?
QuickTime in general has many patents.

A patent wouldn't stop me from writing the source code, but a binary
couldn't be provided by anyone in a country that recognizes software
patents.

Mike
-- 
Michael David Crawford
mdcrawford at gmail dot com

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