Flac is great, but I have some questions about the way the metadata is stored. It takes an age to retag the file because all the data has to be shuffled around the disk. For most formats (ogg, mp3) the filesize is small, but I was thinking, why not have the metadata at the end of the file? This would not really be a problem for streaming, since you just read out the metadata from the end first, the hop back to the beginning, and you could differentiate the two systems with some identifier, like starting the file with fLAC instead of fLaC, so that old decoders just reject the new format, but new ones know to read the last 4B (int) to find the offset for where to find the data. It then jumps back to the beginning. Conversion between the formats is no problem. Am I totally overreacting, or do I have some justification? It takes about 5 mins to change some track data for a cd, even encoded at best. This is really not very user friendly, and going through and adding lots of padding to the batch of cds I just ripped, then adding the data, then removing all the padding is a bit cumbersome. Nick
Hi, Nick On Wed, 2006-09-20 at 20:29 +0100, Nicholas Wilson wrote:> Flac is great, but I have some questions about the way the metadata is stored. > It takes an age to retag the file because all the data has to be shuffled > around the disk. For most formats (ogg, mp3) the filesize is small, but I > was thinking, why not have the metadata at the end of the file? > > This would not really be a problem for streaming, since you just read out the > metadata from the end first, the hop back to the beginning, and you could > differentiate the two systems with some identifier, like starting the file > with fLAC instead of fLaC, so that old decoders just reject the new format, > but new ones know to read the last 4B (int) to find the offset for where to > find the data. It then jumps back to the beginning. Conversion between the > formats is no problem. Am I totally overreacting, or do I have some > justification? It takes about 5 mins to change some track data for a cd, > even encoded at best. This is really not very user friendly, and going > through and adding lots of padding to the batch of cds I just ripped, then > adding the data, then removing all the padding is a bit cumbersome.I think the consequences outweigh the benefits. Having metadata at the beginning of the file serves as metadata and gives you important information such as expected stream length. Pushing this to the back for the sake of making tag updates quicker seems a bit of a bad move to me - how often do you re-tag your files?> > Nick > _______________________________________________ > Flac mailing list > Flac@xiph.org > http://lists.xiph.org/mailman/listinfo/flac-- Alex Jones <alex@weej.com>
On Wednesday 20 September 8:56 pm, Alex Jones wrote:> I think the consequences outweigh the benefits. Having metadata at the > beginning of the file serves as metadata and gives you important > information such as expected stream length. Pushing this to the back for > the sake of making tag updates quicker seems a bit of a bad move to me - > how often do you re-tag your files? >Reasonably often. I keep adding more information in dribbles every time I go to look something up on the cd case. What was the rationale behind putting the data most likely to change at the start of the file? Nick
--- Nicholas Wilson <nicholas.c.wilson@ntlworld.com> wrote:> It takes about 5 mins to change some track data for a cd, > even encoded at best. This is really not very user friendly, andgoing> through and adding lots of padding to the batch of cds I just ripped,then> adding the data, then removing all the padding is a bit cumbersome.but that's exactly what the padding is for, to keep from having to overwrite the whole file. unless you originally encoded with no padding, or the padding was too small, there should be no problem. (also, you don't need to add padding to add metadata; adding padding, then adding metadata, then removing padding does the same thing but takes 3 times as long as just adding metadata to a file with no padding.) metadata is at the front of the stream because if a source is decoding FLAC and can't seek the input, it can still get data about the stream before decoding starts. Josh __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com