[vorbis-dev] On the "broken" .WAV files issue

[Shawn Pourchot]

As one that has been responsible for adding the little chunks of crap at the
end of wave files here's a clue to keeping it clean...

Obey the RIFF format.  If the first DWORD tag is unknown look at the second
DWORD for how long the unknown chunk is and skip it.  All this
WAVEFORMAT(EX) size confusion is usually solved by looking at the ' fmt'
tags second DWORD (size).

Here's a utility (from the WIN32 platform SDK) that does a nice quick job of
parsing a RIFF file (AVI and WAV).

-----Original Message-----
From: xiphmont at xiph.org [mailto:xiphmont at xiph.org]
Sent: Monday, August 27, 2001 3:50 PM
To: vorbis-dev at xiph.org
Subject: Re: [vorbis-dev] On the "broken" .WAV files issue

OK, time to put an end to this:

Tool maintainers: We all know that Microsoft doesn't really design
'specs' they just 'sorta happen'.  Breaking last week's format to
implement this weeks hack that will be backed out the week after is
how Microsoft works.

However, we need to support WAV files and *stop pissing off users*.
The mess-that-is-WAV is not the users' fault.  Let's support the four
variants, drop the damned warnings (unless there's a very good
practical reason to keep it, like 'odd WAV version, not tested, tell
us if it doesn't work') and make the users happy.  

Lastly, we need to deal with truncated WAVs and WAVs that stick crap
in chunks at the end of the files.  Many of the end-of-Ogg
'thump/crack' problems could be programs sticking little info snippets
in a chunk at the end.

End of argument.  Do it please, and make it a priority.

Monty

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