[Flac] Metadata block requirements

[Martin Leese]

Ron Cococcia <ron.cococcia at request.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have recently found a number of FLAC files that have a PICTURE block
> as the first metadata block in the file.  From the format documentation,
> it mentions that the STREAMINFO block must be present as the first
> block.  I'm guessing that someone somewhere is not playing nicely with
> the format, but I just wanted to confirm that this is incorrect so that
> I can fix the files if they are bad.

My reading of the FLAC spec at:
http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html#metadata_block

is that the mandatory STREAMINFO
metadata block must come first.  Here is
the relevant extract:

    STREAM
        <32> 	"fLaC", ...
        METADATA_BLOCK 	This is the mandatory STREAMINFO metadata
block that has the basic properties of the stream
        METADATA_BLOCK* 	Zero or more metadata blocks
        FRAME+ 	One or more audio frames

Regards,
Martin
-- 
Martin J Leese
E-mail: martin.leese at stanfordalumni.org
Web: http://members.tripod.com/martin_leese/