[Flac-users] questions about 1.1.0 release

[Josh Coalson]

--- "David W. Tamkin" <dattier at panix.com> wrote:
> First, as long as you don't use the --cuesheet option when you
> encode, are
> .flac files encoded by 1.1.0 still readable by earlier versions?

that's right.

> Second, if the old default for seekpoints was -S100x and the new one
> is -S10s,
> does that mean that, if you encode a 44.1-ksps WAV that was ripped
> from a CD,
> the old default was to set 441 seekpoints per second and the new one
> is to set
> one seekpoint every ten seconds?

no, -S100x meant 100 seekpoints per stream, regardless of the
length.  a three minute song would have one every 1.8 seconds
but a 70 minute album would have one every 42 seconds.  that's
why a switched to a fixed interval spacing.

> One of the major reasons I preferred FLAC to APE, despite APE's
> usually
> tighter compression, was that it sought with much more precision. 
> One
> seekpoint every ten seconds is way too coarse for the default; surely
> I'm
> missing something here.  Then again, 441 seekpoints per second would
> be
> overkill.

the seekpoints are not the only places in the stream that can
be seeked to, they are just hints about regular locations in
the stream.  you can still seek to any sample.  the number of
seekpoints are just one factor in determining how fast the
decoder can find any particular sample.  I did a lot of testing
before deciding on -S10s.

> Third, 4 KB of padding is now the default; isn't it needed a lot less
> often
> than it is not needed?

it depends on how you encode, if you use --tag and --cuesheet
at encode time or later then you probably don't need it.  a
little bit may come in handy though.

> It seems I'll need to use --no-padding and a specific seekpoint
> setting every
> time I encode, but the bad part is that I'll have to ask others to do
> the
> same.  Well, maybe not; I can always reencode with more seekpoints
> and less
> padding, true?

yes, you can add padding and seekpoints with metaflac now.

Josh


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com