(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC [LWN.net]

FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio CODEC, is an audio application that is used for compressing and de-compressing audio files. FLAC is being developed by the Xiph.org Foundation. FLAC is similar in functionality to shorten, another lossless audio compression utility. FLAC contrasts with popular lossy compression schemes such as Vorbis and MP3. The FLAC comparison document contains a lot of useful information on FLAC and other encoder/decoder systems. [FLAC]

The FLAC software includes the flac command line utility, the metaflac command-line metadata editor, a library of reference encoders and decoders, and input plugins for music players.

Some of the FLAC source code has been released under a variant of the BSD license, and the rest is licensed under the GPL. The FLAC format is open, as explained by the FLAC license document: "The FLAC and Ogg FLAC formats themselves, and their specifications, are fully open to the public to be used for any purpose (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance). They are free for commercial or noncommercial use."

The FLAC features include:

Lossless audio encoding and decoding.
Support for 1 to 8 channels of audio.
Support for audio from 4-32 bits/sample and 1-655350 samples/second.
Designed for fast decoding, encoding is more processor intensive.
Capable of supporting hardware decoders.
Data frames are atomic, allowing seeking and editing, and improving operation in the presence of errors.
Support for forward-compatible metadata definitions.
Contains CD cue-sheets in the metadata.

The features documentation has an amusing take on FLAC's copy protection: "Another way to look at it is that since copy protection is futile, it really carries no information, so you might say FLAC already losslessly compresses all possible copy protection information down to zero bits!"

Details on the inner workings of FLAC can be found in the project documentation.

FLAC is used by a long list of hardware vendors, organizations and web sites. The software runs on a wide variety of platforms.

The current release of FLAC is version 1.1.2, it was released last February.

If you surf any of the numerous free (not to be confused with pirate) music sites, chances are you will need a copy of FLAC. You can download a copy here.

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(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC

Posted Sep 15, 2005 9:14 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

"pirate music" ? Do you mean something like:

"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest--
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
?

The Humpty-Dumpty priviledge `When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.' is not to be left to the RIAA.

(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC

Posted Sep 15, 2005 21:20 UTC (Thu) by cook (editor, #4) [Link]

>Do you mean something like: >"Fifteen men on the dead man's chest-- >Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"

Arrrrrr!

I was thinking more along the lines of music from Bands That Allow Recording.

(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC

Posted Sep 17, 2005 19:00 UTC (Sat) by alspnost (subscriber, #2763) [Link]

Don't forget that it's international "Talk Like a Pirate" day this Monday:

http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

Have fun me scurvy bilge rats!

(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC

Posted Sep 16, 2005 12:19 UTC (Fri) by climent (subscriber, #7232) [Link]

It is not mention that the latest release of FLAC allows one to use both
FLAC container or Ogg container, which allows proper ff and rw.

However, the a FLAC file inside an Ogg container has a problem: there is
not way to modify the tags once the file has been created. Tags must be
set during the encoding. At least until someone modifies
metaflac/vorbiscomment to allow such modifications (I was told on
#vorbis@freenode that modifications were on their way, but still not have
happened). Anyone?