FLAC and E-Touch Config

[paddy]

I am having trouble getting E-Touch Config in the V5 Demo to see my collection of FLAC files. There are MP3's embedded in the same directory structure as the FLAC files and those show up just fine. I did notice that *.flac is not in the default search mask, so I did add a ",*.flac" to the end of the existing list (less the enclosing quotes, of course)  .

I am not sure if this is applicable to Config, but FLAC files play just fine in WMP.

What am I missing?

Thanks.

[Barcrest]

No tag reading of FLAC files sorry.

[paddy]

Thanks for the fast answer.

Well that's a bummer - I really like the E-Touch interface. My entire library is FLAC encoded so that support is critical. I seem to recall seeing somewhere the FLAC capability was present but untested. I must be imagining that since I can't find the reference now.

Is FLAC support in the plan? If so, I'll hang in for it.

Regards.

[Barcrest]

I ca't read the tags dude that is the issue.

[Novalak]

im not programmer but what about porting the code from another language ie c# something like this

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/cyber_sinh.aspx

[Novalak]

http://flac.sourceforge.net/documentation.html

[Barcrest]

But the WMA Tag reading and M4A also need fixing up and we have seen how far i have gotten with that.

[Woody]

Barry,

Couldn't he use the non-Mp3 tagger as a final resort ?

Woody

[fordman]

You can use Easy Cd Creator to convert the .flac files to MP3's .http://www.poikosoft.com/.

I have a *Special* version of the program that you can download from here www.ppcomponents.com/jukebox/EasyCDCreator.rar . I'll host this for 48 hours then it will be bye bye.

It will convert the .flac to mp3.

The biggest part of your mission will be to have your ID3 tags in order, NO matter what program you use.



Fordman

[Barcrest]

Barry,

Couldn't he use the non-Mp3 tagger as a final resort ?

Woody

Actually yes he could, didn't think of that but it would involve tagging all the music again so to speak.

[paddy]

Wow! Lots of good commentary here. Many thanks to each of you.

I have been a happy user of CD-DA Extractor for many years and quite familiar with this excellent product. While transcoding to MP3 is easily done and can sound okay at sufficiently high bit rates, the MP3 format is lossy by design and is not appropriate for archival storage of my CD collection. I  evaluated and switched to FLAC about 2 years ago and have re-ripped pretty much everything now. My strong preference is to stick with FLAC and not have the same song ripped multiple times in differing formats.

I see someone has posted the URL to the FLAC documentation page. On the developers side there is some pretty comprehensive documentation on using the FLAC APIs including using the APIs to extract tags.

The non-MP3 tagger is an interesting idea. FLAC uses Vorbis tags and I am not adverse to adding ID3 tags. Let me look at this option.

Nobody has said whether the FLAC encoded files will play once I get the tag issue addresses. I am proceeding under the assumption they will. Stay tuned - there is certainly more to come.

Thanks again for all the help.

Regards.

[Barcrest]

If you can play the FLAC files in WMP then you can play them in Freebox/E-Touch. You may need to install something like the K-Lite Codec pack to get them to play but then you are golden. The only issue i can see is the tag reading, i have tried to add basic tag reading but so far it is far from perfect. If the config doesn't see the flac files at all that is more worrying. Do you have the extension in the list of supported extensions?

[Woody]

Paddy,

The Non-Mp3 tagger does not modify any of the media files, it generates a small stand alone "tag file" that resides in the same directory. When the  program pointer is looking at the media file it read this "tag file" instead of trying to read the headed in the media file itself. It works great for my video files and as far as I know it will work for any
media file once the file association is set for windows media player.

Woody

[Lave Laar]

Here are a couple of libraries that will read tags.  Including wma, ogg and flac.
One is free, the other not (nagware, but only 20 euro).  Both come with VB6 example code.

MediaInfo (free) at: http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en

AudioGenie (nagware) at:  http://www.audiogenie.net/en/features.htm