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6 .TH "FLAC" "1" "02 July 2002" "" ""
8 flac \- Free Lossless Audio Codec
11 \fBflac\fR [ \fB\fIOPTION\fB\fR] \fB\fIinfile\fB\fR \fB\fI...\fB\fR
15 This manual page documents briefly the
18 This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux
19 distribution because the original program does not have a
20 manual page. Instead, it has documentation in HTML
24 A summary of options is included below. For a complete
25 description, see the HTML documentation.
29 Show detailed help screen
32 Decode (default behavior is encode)
35 Encode from standard input, or decode to
39 Test a flac encoded file (same as -d
40 except no decoded file is written)
43 Analyze a flac encoded file (same as -d
44 except an analysis file is written)
47 Silent mode (do not write runtime
48 encode/decode statistics to stdout)
50 \fB-o \fIfilename\fB\fR
51 Force the output file name (usually flac just
52 changes the extension). May only be used when
53 encoding a single file. May not be used in
54 conjunction with --output-prefix.
56 \fB--output-prefix \fIstring\fB\fR
57 Prefix each output file name with the given
58 string. This can be useful for encoding/decoding
59 files to a different directory. Make sure if your
60 string is a path name that it ends with a trailing
63 \fB--delete-input-file \fR
64 Automatically delete the input file after a
65 successful encode or decode. If there was an
66 error (including a verify error) the input file
69 \fB--skip \fIsamples\fB\fR
70 Skip the specified number of samples at the
71 beginning of the input file (can be used for both
72 encoding and decoding)
73 .SS "ANALYSIS OPTIONS"
76 Includes the residual signal in the analysis
77 file. This will make the file very big, much
78 larger than even the decoded file.
81 Generates a gnuplot file for every subframe;
82 each file will contain the residual distribution
83 of the subframe. This will create a lot of
85 .SS "DECODING OPTIONS"
88 By default flac stops decoding with an error
89 and removes the partially decoded file if it
90 encounters a bitstream error. With -F, errors are
91 still printed but flac will continue decoding to
92 completion. Note that errors may cause the decoded
93 audio to be missing some samples or have silent
95 .SS "ENCODING OPTIONS"
98 When encoding, generate Ogg-FLAC output instead
99 of native-FLAC. Ogg-FLAC streams are FLAC streams
100 wrapped in an Ogg transport layer. The resulting
101 file should have an '.ogg' extension and will still
102 be decodable by flac.
104 When decoding, force the input to be treated as
105 Ogg-FLAC. This is useful when piping input from
106 stdin or when the filename does not end in '.ogg'.
109 Allow encoder to generate non-Subset
113 Align encoding of multiple CD format WAVE
114 files on sector boundaries. See the HTML
115 documentation for more information.
117 \fB-S \fI{ # | X | #x }\fB\fR
118 Include a point or points in a SEEKTABLE. Using #,
119 a seek point at that sample number is added. Using
120 X, a placeholder point is added at the end of a the
121 table. Using #x, # evenly spaced seek points will
122 be added, the first being at sample 0. You may use
123 many -S options; the resulting SEEKTABLE will be the
124 unique-ified union of all such values. With no -S
125 options, flac defaults to '-S 100x'. Use -S- for
126 no SEEKTABLE. Note: '-S #x' will not work if the
127 encoder can't determine the input size before
128 starting. Note: if you use '-S #' and # is >=
129 samples in the input, there will be either no seek
130 point entered (if the input size is determinable
131 before encoding starts) or a placeholder point (if
132 input size is not determinable).
135 Tell the encoder to write a PADDING metadata
136 block of the given length (in bytes) after the
137 STREAMINFO block. This is useful if you plan to
138 tag the file later with an APPLICATION block;
139 instead of having to rewrite the entire file later
140 just to insert your block, you can write directly
141 over the PADDING block. Note that the total length
142 of the PADDING block will be 4 bytes longer than
143 the length given because of the 4 metadata block
144 header bytes. You can force no PADDING block at
145 all to be written with -P-, which is the default.
147 \fB-b \fIblocksize\fB\fR
148 Default is 1152 for -l 0, else 4608; must be
149 192/576/1152/2304/4608/256/512/1024/2048/4096/8192/16384/32768
150 (unless --lax is used)
153 Try mid-side coding for each frame (stereo
157 Loose mid-side coding for all frames (stereo
161 Fastest compression..highest compression
162 (default is -5). These are synonyms for other
167 Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -r 2,2
170 Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -M -r 2,2
173 Synonymous with -l 0 -b 1152 -m -r 3
176 Synonymous with -l 6 -b 4608 -r 3,3
179 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -M -r 3,3
182 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 3,3
185 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -r 4
188 Synonymous with -l 8 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6
191 Synonymous with -l 12 -b 4608 -m -e -r 6
195 Fastest compression. Currently
199 Highest compression. Currently
203 Do exhaustive model search
207 Do escape coding in the entropy coder. This
208 causes the encoder to use an unencoded representation
209 of the residual in a partition if it is smaller. It
210 increases the runtime and usually results in an
211 improvement of less than 1%.
213 \fB-l \fImax_lpc_order\fB\fR
214 0 => use only fixed predictors
217 Do exhaustive search of LP coefficient
218 quantization (expensive!). Overrides -q,
219 does nothing if using -l 0
222 Precision of the quantized linear-predictor
223 coefficients, 0 => let encoder decide (min is 5,
226 \fB-r \fI[level,]level\fB\fR
227 Set the [min,]max residual partition order
228 (0..16). min defaults to 0 if unspecified. Default
232 Verify a correct encoding by decoding the
233 output in parallel and comparing to the
236 \fB-F- -S- -P- -m- -M- -e- -E- -p- -V- --delete-input-file- --lax- --ogg- \fR
237 These flags can be used to invert the sense
238 of the corresponding normal option.
242 Big-endian byte order
245 Little-endian byte order
247 \fB-fc \fIchannels\fB\fR
248 Set number of channels.
250 \fB-fp \fIbits_per_sample\fB\fR
253 \fB-fs \fIsample_rate\fB\fR
254 Set sample rate (in Hz).
257 Unsigned samples (default is signed)
260 Force to raw format (even if filename ends
264 The programs are documented fully by HTML format
265 documentation, available in
266 \fI/usr/share/doc/flac/html\fR on
267 Debian GNU/Linux systems.
270 This manual page was written by Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> for
271 the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).