[vorbis-dev] Header

[Monty]

> I don't know if this is possible, or fits in with your plans for the format,
> but with OggVorbis would it be possible to add a simple header,
> such as that in the first frame of an MP3 file with information encoded
> such as bitrate, samplerate etc.

There is one.  You still have to do some parsing though.

> This would simplify things greatly from the perspective of people
> developing utilities such as playlist editors, search engines etc.
> especially if it was in the first few bytes of the file. (for example, it
> saves a lot of bandwidth for me in most cases having to only download
> the first 4 bytes of an MP3 file [for the first frame header] and the last
> 128 bytes [for ID3]).

The fixed [small] size of ID3 is one of its greatest mistakes.

All the information you want is there... cross platform libs for getting it 
are there.

To get the comments, you don't know how much data exactly you have to read.  
To get the initial header, though, is a fixed size.

Monty

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