[Flac-dev] Indexed FLAC file?

[Brian Waters]

.m3u and .pls playlist files are pretty common and most major media
players support them, maybe even embedded ones like the one in your
car. David's right, the best thing is to make a database of your stuff
(iTunes was good, the last time I had a mac), but then that won't work
in your car or anything.

For a long time I've wanted to make a web-based music database that
does the tables the right way, with foreign keys and lookup tables for
artists and albums, instead of the naieve "giant excel spreadsheet"
approach that everything else takes these days. For thirty bucks a
month you could stream your stuff to your smartphone and rock out
wherever there's a headphone jack. Actually, there is something like
that out now (but I thought of it first!), it's called subsonic, and I
haven't looked at it. If I ever stop being lazy and build my project,
I'll send you an email.

- BW



On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 5:53 PM, George Barton <crashputer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>    I have a very large music collection that I keep on a portable hard
> drive (to plug in to car USB, carry with when I'm at my office, etc).
> All but a few dozen files are part of an album, and not a single audio
> file. This translates to an insane amount of files stored on my hard
> drive. I am very strict about how I label and file my media (I loathe
> unlabeled audio tracks), but even so it is very tedious at times to
> navigate this file structure, and takes a long time to load in my car. I
> have seen other file formats (specifically one proprietary audio book
> format) that supported indexing, and think it would be a great feature
> to add to FLAC. Example...
>
> Instead of having:
>     \Dark Side of the Moon
>         01 - Speak to Me.FLAC
>         02 - Breathe.FLAC
>         03 - On the Run.FLAC
>         ...
>
> Like a CD, you would have:
>     Dark Side of the Moon.FLAC
>         -01 - Speak to Me
>         -02 - Breathe
>         -03 - On the Run
>         ...
>
> It seems to me that a .cue (or something similar) file could be appended
> to the FLAC file, and the ID tags modified and merged to reflect the
> indexes. Any newer program/hardware could take full advantage of the
> indexes, and any older program/hardware would simply see the FLAC file.
>
> I can see one major disadvantage. It would be more difficult to place a
> full playlist in shuffle mode without the program/hardware creating a
> master index detailing the contents of each file. However, many
> computer-based media players already do this.
>
> I'm not very (any) good (at all) at coding, or I would have a go at
> creating this.
>
> Just a thought...
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