[Flac] While I'm Thinking About metaflac...

[Graue]

"Brad Leblanc" <brad.leblanc at gmail.com> wrote:

> While I'm playing around with it, I'd like to ask about something I've
> noticed.
>
> Sometimes when I use metaflac to add tags, it performs it's operation
> instantly in a split second.  Other times the same command causes lot of HDD
> I/O's and I can see it create a "filename.flac.metadata_edit" temp file.
> For example - I just added tags to a 25MB file and it took 15 seconds to
> process the command.

The tags are stored at the beginning of the file.
Since it's not possible to add new data into the
beginning or middle of a file, adding tags
normally means having to copy all the audio data
that comes afterwards.

The reason this is sometimes fast is that FLAC
adds a padding block with unused space after the
tags. As long as your new tags fit in the padding
block, nothing has to be copied.

If this is a frequent problem for you, look at the
documentation for FLAC's --padding option. Setting
a larger padding size might help.

Regards,
Graue