[Flac] flac files playable in iTunes 5.0.1 ?

[Arek Korbik]

Jerry,

On 1/31/07, Jerry Helffrich <jhelffrich at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>   Is the recent version 0.1.5 (08.05.2006) of XiphQT compatible with
> iTunes 5.0.1 and Mac OSX 10.4?  I am trying to get flac files to play

The main factor here is the QuickTime version you have installed. If
it's 7 or later you should be able to use XiphQT.

> in my iTunes and hope I don't have to upgrade iTunes and get all the
> junk that comes with it.  i already have ogg support, so this is an
> incremental improvement.

iTunes ability, or rather willingness, to play FLAC files is another
question. In practice, the recent versions of iTunes "secretly"
support Oggs - they have '.ogg' extension and 'OggS' magic-file-id
(which qtcomponents.sf.net and now XiphQT have used for years)
hardcoded and if you happen to have the necessary components (which
Apple does not provide) to import and decode Oggs then iTunes is able
to use them. Unfortunately, iTunes does not seem to have anything
hardcoded about FLAC file format or extensions, and not because of the
lack of requests - see the last part of this post:
http://lists.apple.com/archives/QuickTime-API/2004/Jul/msg00179.html
That means: even if you have a FLAC decoder, which XiphQT provides,
and a native FLAC file format importer, which can be found at:
http://people.xiph.org/~arek/flac_import/
iTunes will still refuse to use it to play FLAC files. You can cheat
and get it working at the moment, see:
http://barelyfocused.net/blog/2006/10/12/native-flac-in-itunesquicktime/
but who knows how iTunes internals will change in 3-4 months from now?

Arek