Hello, I read through the specifications here: http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html but the document is not "autonomous". Instead, sections entitled "prediction" and "residual coding", use external references, some of with are unavailable (dead link) or in poor state. What i mean here is that it is not possible to write a decoder from scratch using only the spec document: it's OK fo metadata, but apparently does not tell everything about the audio data format. To make sure everyone will be able to decode FLAC data in decades from now, it would be nice to have a single, self-contained document about audio data in FLAC files ! Paul
Good point. But, gee, doesn't the source code serve as a provably- complete documentation of the format? It's able to be compiled into a program that can decode all files. I'm only half serious. Source code is not the most concise way to describe a format. Brian Willoughby Sound Consulting On Jan 28, 2009, at 11:20, porte64 at free.fr wrote:> I read through the specifications here: > http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html > but the document is not "autonomous". > > Instead, sections entitled "prediction" and "residual coding", > use external references, some of with are unavailable > (dead link) or in poor state. > > What i mean here is that it is not possible to > write a decoder from scratch using only the spec document: > it's OK fo metadata, but apparently does not tell > everything about the audio data format. > > To make sure everyone will be able to decode > FLAC data in decades from now, it would be nice > to have a single, self-contained document > about audio data in FLAC files ! > > Paul
Hi all Flac files, as us knows, follows the Vorbis Tags system included in block 4 Recently Vorbis has established the possibility to include picture files by means of 2 Tags: COVERARTMIME AND COVERART. To work therewith is quite easy. However Flac stores picture files in block 6. The edition (to add and to modify Tags and pictures simultaneously in two separate blocks) becomes a difficult and tedious task in comparison with the easiness of Vorbis handling . I think the current situation is an error. No Tags type acts this way, except Matroska. Would not it be better for Flac to follow Vorbis approach, including covert art in block 4 and to abandon the insertion of pictures in block 6? Another question. Where a Tag should be included with song lyrics? Regards. Santiago