[Flac-dev] Flac and lyrics

[Ben Allison]

Both MPEG-4 File Format (mp4) and Matroska (mkv) have an interesting
format for lyrics and subtitles.  Since these container formats can
contain multiple contain streams, lyrics or subtitles are just another
"stream" interleaved with the rest of the data.  They are synchronized by
having timestamps like any other stream.  The payload is just text data.

If you don't care about synchronizing the lyrics with the music, stuffing
the lyrics in the metadata is the most simple and straightforward way.

For a single stream file format like FLAC, you can't interleave a timed
lyrics track, although you could put the entire block of data up-front in
an application metadata block as Brian suggests.

You could also put FLAC in an mkv container which would allow you take
advantage of matroska's lyrics support.  FLAC streams in the matroska
spec, but I'm unsure what media players support this combination (and if
the ones that do support it will also support lyrics)

-Ben Allison


> FLAC supports Application-specific metadata blocks.  Although I am
> not aware of any which are specific to lyrics, you could create your
> own.  If nothing exists, and you were to make a proposal for review
> by the community, then I'm sure you could start a new standard.
>
> On that topic, what other audio file formats support lyrics?  Where
> can we see documentation for the existing formats?  It might be
> helpful to look at the better designs which have come before.
>
> Brian Willoughby
> Sound Consulting
>
>
> On Aug 31, 2009, at 14:53, Jérôme COUDERC wrote:
>>     I haven't seen any information about Lyrics in the
>> documentation and
>> mail archives, so I guess the answer... but may be I've missed
>> something...
>> Does flac support lyrics?
>
>
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