On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 05:41:21AM -0800, avuton at gmail.com wrote:> Hate to be Capt. obvious here, but there's a lot of development going > on here that should be encouraged. If the FLAC project isn't going to > open up, it would make a lot of sense for someone to take over > maintenance on a github account with the git-cvsimport or such. I > don't see anyone stepping up, me included, but I wanted to throw this > out there in case someone hasn't really thought about it yet.Looking at the FLAC website, the most recent news is almost 2 years old, and there's no evidence to show that the project's still live. I haven't seen any post from Josh Coalson on this list in a while: is he still running the project? Something else to think about: Apple recently released sources for Apple Lossless reference utilities. It's all under an Apache license. This will (presumably) lead to more software developers spending more time improving ALAC support in their projects, with more reference material available than the unofficial reverse-engineered code (as used in vlc and libavcodec). This will leave Apple with even less reasons to support FLAC in their own products. Anyone with an iPad/iPhone/iPod must install Rockbox to play FLAC files, and the Apple TV can only play FLAC (and anything that was not bought from iTunes) using XBMC, after being jailbroken. But for the Average End User, they don't want to have to jump through a bunch of hoops to get FLAC support. Apple Lossless will Just Work on all Apple devices (as it always did), but now it's more freely available so the freedom-loving hippies can stop complaining about the source code. -- -Dec. --- "Mosaic is going to be on every computer in the world." - Marc Andreessen, 1994
Brian Willoughby
2011-Nov-16 23:36 UTC
[Flac-dev] Git branch with compiling fixes for win32
On Nov 16, 2011, at 14:11, Declan Kelly wrote:> On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 05:41:21AM -0800, avuton at gmail.com wrote: >> Hate to be Capt. obvious here, but there's a lot of development going >> on here that should be encouraged. If the FLAC project isn't going to >> open up, it would make a lot of sense for someone to take over >> maintenance on a github account with the git-cvsimport or such. I >> don't see anyone stepping up, me included, but I wanted to throw this >> out there in case someone hasn't really thought about it yet. > > Looking at the FLAC website, the most recent news is almost 2 years > old, > and there's no evidence to show that the project's still live. I > haven't > seen any post from Josh Coalson on this list in a while: is he still > running the project? > > Something else to think about: > Apple recently released sources for Apple Lossless reference > utilities. > It's all under an Apache license. > > This will (presumably) lead to more software developers spending more > time improving ALAC support in their projects, with more reference > material available than the unofficial reverse-engineered code (as > used > in vlc and libavcodec). > > This will leave Apple with even less reasons to support FLAC in their > own products. Anyone with an iPad/iPhone/iPod must install Rockbox to > play FLAC files, and the Apple TV can only play FLAC (and anything > that > was not bought from iTunes) using XBMC, after being jailbroken. > > But for the Average End User, they don't want to have to jump > through a > bunch of hoops to get FLAC support. Apple Lossless will Just Work > on all > Apple devices (as it always did), but now it's more freely > available so > the freedom-loving hippies can stop complaining about the source code.Declan, You make some important observations, but I do not see how anything can be done by the FLAC team about Apple's lack of support. As for FLAC, no news is good news. That means the code is stable and bug free. As a seasoned software developer, I've learned the hard way that every single change to a source code repository is a chance for a new or old bug to appear. I am not aware of any bugs in FLAC, so the lack of changes is perfect. It seems that all of the recent updates have been efforts to port FLAC to operating systems like Windows and Linux. In terms of your comments above, Windows/Linux support does absolutely nothing to help FLAC compete against ALAC on the OSX platform. It is indeed noteworthy that Apple has released the source for ALAC. The power of FLAC is that it was designed for embedded systems from the beginning, and that's why you see portable recorders like the Sound Devices 700 Series supporting FLAC, as well as various optical disc players (CD, DVD, etc.). One question that remains for me is whether Apple's ALAC open source can be ported to these kinds of embedded systems with the same ease. Yes, it has always been an issue that Apple never seemed motivated to support FLAC as a first class file format in OSX, CoreAudio, iTunes, and their hardware platforms based on iOS. I really don't see how there is much that Josh Coalson or anyone outside Apple can do about this. If people in the FLAC community have CoreAudio converters for FLAC or iTunes plugins for FLAC, then it would be great to see those contributed to the open source collection. However, none of those items would really result in a change to the FLAC library sources, which have been stable and solid for a respectable amount of time. Brian Willoughby Sound Consulting
On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 03:36:12PM -0800, brianw at sounds.wa.com wrote:> > This will leave Apple with even less reasons to support FLAC ... > > You make some important observations, but I do not see how anything > can be done by the FLAC team about Apple's lack of support.I think that only people who work for Apple can do anything to persuade Apple to (ahem) think different about FLAC. I'm guessing there is a strong "Not Invented Here" effect at work.> As for FLAC, no news is good news. That means the code is stable and > bug free.I appreciate that, a lot. That's why I run mostly Debian or Ubuntu LTS on machines that need to be stable (but don't need to have the latest fancy stuff). Unfortunately, most people tend to prefer the latest fancy stuff (in devices and installed software) so for those people lack of change is usually seen as a bad thing. Although having said that, last time I had to install FLAC on a Windows PC (someone else's) the GUI front-end that I downloaded came with an older flac.exe than the current FLAC version at the time.> It seems that all of the recent updates have been efforts to port > FLAC to operating systems like Windows and Linux. In terms of your > comments above, Windows/Linux support does absolutely nothing to help > FLAC compete against ALAC on the OSX platform.Not directly, no... ...but most people like New Stuff as opposed to not fixing something that isn't broken. Enough to cause more interest in Apple Lossless as a supported format (outside of Apple devices) and therefore less interest in FLAC. It could even cause some music download sites to reconsider their support of FLAC.> It is indeed noteworthy that Apple has released the source for ALAC. > The power of FLAC is that it was designed for embedded systems from > the beginning, and that's why you see portable recorders like the > Sound Devices 700 Series supporting FLAC, as well as various optical > disc players (CD, DVD, etc.). One question that remains for me is > whether Apple's ALAC open source can be ported to these kinds of > embedded systems with the same ease.I wish I could afford a portable recorder from Sound Devices! They record multichannel or stereo in FLAC aswell as playing it, right? Obviously, FLAC requires much less horsepower to decode than to encode, and that's OK (for most uses) because the decode will happen more often. I can live with uncompressed recording, but when buying hardware, FLAC support is always a deciding factor. However, almost every device that can play audio (from el-cheapo DVD players, to almost every "pro" DJ or broadcast deck) is able to play MP3 files. Most of them can also play WMA and AAC (lossy), but FLAC support on mass-market devices is rare. There is such a huge variety of chipsets and other hardware elements that it's impractical to port Rockbox to them. For example, OPPO do some very nice DVD and BD players for the home theatre and audiophile markets. But only their top-range players can play FLAC files. That is according to their own website, but it may be a "hidden extra". Similarly, CD DJ decks from Pioneer and Denon seem to support every lossy compressed audio format, but not lossless. And to make it even worse, Silvio Zeppieri (Denon brand manager) commented on www.denondjforums.com (in Feb 2010) that their reason for not supporting FLAC was that hard drives are cheap now, so just use WAV for "lossless" instead, as it would cost Denon too much to develop FLAC support. FolderPlay (app for Nokia S60) is what I listen to music with on the move every day (mostly FLAC, some MP3) and the developer told me that it took him half a day to add FLAC support. Whereas Denon were afraid that the DJ features (scratch, loop in/out points, etc) that are already possible on Denon hardware in WAV, will cost them too much development time to support in FLAC. What impressed me most about the discussion on www.denondjforums.com wasn't the overall defeatist attitude from a Denon manager (he said "no direct FLAC sales" in Feb 2010), but that most of the other people on the forum agreed that hard drives are so cheap that lossless has no real advantage: digital DJs should either use MP3s (not caring about sound quality) or WAV (not caring about storage space). And now we find ourselves in a world where hard drives are suddenly not cheap anymore... -- -Dec. --- "Mosaic is going to be on every computer in the world." - Marc Andreessen, 1994