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[jgreen]

It's fully broken, see my notes to Scthom.  If you've installed it go back to 1.2001.

[scthom]

Just to be clear, 1.3 is the Encoder version.  The errors you are finding are with the Decoder, version 1.0.

[Alex B]

Thanks for the warning. I appreciate it. However, my data is not in danger. My archive format is disc image Monkey's Audio & CUE & APL. I have just been happy to see scthom making FLAC plug-ins for MC and tried to help debugging. I have introduced MC to many friends and some of them have reasons to use FLAC.

EDIT

The forum SW did not warn me that scthom posted a new message during I was writing mine (I answered to phone and had the write dialog open for several minutes). Has anyone else noticed that the behavior has changed?

[jgreen]

I too am grateful for scthom's hard work.  Sorry for the drama, but I couldn't get any of the converted files to work, so I pulled the fire alarm.

I tested this using artists I was willing to risk:  John Denver, Laura Branigan, and the artist formerly known as Ponce.  Since the converter sends the files to the recycle bin, I was able to rescue everything except John Denver singing an alternate version of "Leaving On A Jet Plane", which I overwrote twice.  You can bet I'm going to bill scthom, given his implied warrantee, etc etc. (Just kidding.)

[scthom]

This is to confirm that version 1.3 of the encoder was broken.  Until fixed, please continue to use version 1.2.  Thanks!  See the thread in the 3rd Party forum for more info.

[soren]

Phew ...

THANKS for the heads up .. was about to convert all my APE/CUE/APL to flac
Just started with the first cd, and went in here during the test run .. LUCKY?

/Sören

[jgreen]

Soren--

Just to clarify, the FLAC encoder available on the "official" jriver downlad page here is GOOD:

http://accessories.jrmediacenter.com/mediacenter/accessories.php

 The beta plugin ver 1.3 on scot's own site, for which you must follow his link from "third party plugins" here on interact, is BAD, and may already be removed.  Scot has done great work on the FLAC plugin, and I am currently using his version 1.2.001, which you can download from the plugin area.  The version in question had only been available for a few hours, and was never an "official" plugin.

[soren]

I got the one from JR, so it should be ok then!
Is it ok to convert all my APEs to FLAC using 1.2 .. no compability issues later on?

/Sören

[jgreen]

None that I'm aware of, and I've done a lot of tracks using the curent version.  I've converted .shn and .wav  to .flac with perfect results.  The versions we refer to are scthom's encoder.  The FLAC algorithm itself  has versions, too, but they are more or less in sync, AFAIK.

If you are going from APE to FLAC, try it on one or two files first.  Examine them for bitrate, duration, etc, and play them all the way through.  Both codecs are lossless, although the tagging structures are different, I'm told.  This MIGHT mean some more obscure tag info is tossed, I don't know.  I'm just learning this myself, but my understanding is that the FLAC tag set is written in stone and never going to change or expand (for the sake of stability and speed), versus APE, which is may see significant expansion in the future, maybe.

So have a look see.  The benefit of FLAC is its simplicity and open source development.  Flac playback is a lighter CPU burden, by design.  Its compression is not quite as small as APE, however.

[scthom]

The only difference between the (buggy) 1.3 encoder and the version posted on JRiver (1.2) is the addition of the seekfile and padding blocks to the metadata.  This is where the bug came into play in the 1.3 version (there was an extra byte written and the first frame was losing sync).  Since the seektable and padding blocks can theoretically be added later, there is not much real difference. (The seektable allows seeking within the file to go much faster).  The bug has been fixed and as soon as it's adequately tested, I'll post it.

As to the file tagging - FLAC uses Vorbis style comments, which are limited to Human-Readable (text) entries, and there is no "standard" in terms of field names.  Which means you can add any tag you want, but it may not be recognized in any other player.  The FLAC developers have decided not to pursue a standard as of yet.  The basics are all covered (artist, title, year, genre, album, tracknumber), but it's the extended stuff that is not standardized.  The main limitation is the "human-readable" part, which means cover art is tricky.

I have no idea what tagging method APE uses so I can't comment there.

[soren]

Thanks for the work on the FLAC codec for MC .. much appreciated!
As for binary content in tags, I guess old fashion UUE could be used

/Sören

[scthom]

Thanks for the work on the FLAC codec for MC .. much appreciated!
As for binary content in tags, I guess old fashion UUE could be used

Well, true.  But that would clearly not fit the "human-readable" requirement of the vorbis comment spec.  The more likely scenario is to get an APPLICATION ID and put it there.  That's really where it belongs.