<HTML><BODY style="word-wrap: break-word; -khtml-nbsp-mode: space; -khtml-line-break: after-white-space; "><DIV>The compression level is really only just a convenient shortcut for humans to use when creating a flac file. The real values used during compression include Max LPC order, blocksize, Rice partition order (min,)max, exhaustive model search flag, and mid-side or Adaptive mid-side coding flags. As you can see, there are a lot of parameters and options, to the compression level just represents common combinations. You can't store the level in the metadata because you can create a tuned flac file without any compression level at all. Another thing to consider is that compression level 8 is not always the best for every file.</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Brian Willoughby</DIV><DIV>Sound Consulting</DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><BR><DIV><DIV>On Jul 5, 2007, at 02:41, Harry Sack wrote:</DIV><BLOCKQUOTE type="cite">Why isn't the compression level added in a metadata block by the flac encoder itself (just like the encoder version)? In this way all programs that read the file can see what compression level was used.<BR><BR>thx<BR><BR> <DIV><SPAN class="gmail_quote">2007/7/4, Scot Thompson <<A href="mailto:scot.thompson@cox.net">scot.thompson@cox.net</A>>:</SPAN><BLOCKQUOTE class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> <DIV> <DIV dir="ltr" align="left"><SPAN><FONT color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">This has been asked many times. The answer is no. I suggest saving the compression level into a tag for future reference, but that won't help you with files you get from unknown locations.</FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR> <DIV dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us"> <HR> <FONT face="Tahoma" size="2"><B>From:</B> <A href="mailto:flac-bounces@xiph.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">flac-bounces@xiph.org</A> [mailto:<A href="mailto:flac-bounces@xiph.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">flac-bounces@xiph.org</A>] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Harry Sack<BR><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, July 04, 2007 7:14 AM<BR><B>To:</B> <A href="mailto:flac@xiph.org" target="_blank" onclick="return top.js.OpenExtLink(window,event,this)">flac@xiph.org</A><BR><B>Subject:</B> [Flac] FLAC: getting compression level using metaflac<BR></FONT><BR></DIV><DIV><SPAN class="e" id="q_11391c915a58c14c_1"> <DIV></DIV>Hi FLAC list!<BR><BR>I have a question (maybe a strange one) about getting the compression level (0-8) using metaflac.<BR>So I want to know for a given FLAC file what compression level was used to compress that file.<BR>I tried using the --list option but this doesn't give any information about this. <BR><BR>Is there a way to get the compression level of a given FLAC file using metaflac or another tool?<BR><BR>thx<BR></SPAN></DIV></DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV><BR></BODY></HTML>