[Flac] flac 1.40 verses ffmpeg

[Michael D. Lawler]

I've done a lot of testing and I hope this mailing list is the place 
to post as I find using forums tedius with my screen reading software 
as I'm blind.  If any developers are interested in pursuing this I'd 
be happy to work with them.  It appears that ffmpeg compression level 
12 uses -l 32.  I realize that ffmpeg uses it's own library for flac 
compression, but it still has to conform to flac standards.

I have a library of pop, rock, and country of about 28,500 
files.  I've always used ffmpeg because generally it gave me better 
compression.  With the release of flac 1.40 using -8 alone gave me 
better compression on about 21,000 files.  adding -p made flac 1.40 
do better on another 1,000 files or so.  Adding --lax -l 32 made flac 
1.40 do better on all but 113 files and adding -e (painful for time) 
do better on another 100 or so files.

My conclusion is that ffmpeg's library is doing something that -e 
does, but not using a lot of CPU so perhaps this could be studied and 
flac could be updated to improve compression further with reasonable 
CPU usage.  I have all of the files and could provide the ones where 
-e is necessary and the few where ffmpeg still does better with -8pe 
--lax -l 32.

Please let me know how I can assist further.

-- 
Michael D. Lawler
email mailto:mdlawler at lawlers.us