FLAC (http://flac.sourceforge.net/) is an Open Source lossless audio
-codec developed by Josh Coalson.
+codec developed by Josh Coalson <jcoalson@users.sourceforge.net>.
Other major contributors and their contributions:
"Andrey Astafiev" <andrei@tvcell.ru>
"Miroslav Lichvar" <mirator@upcase.inf.upol.cz>
* IA-32 assembly versions of several libFLAC routines
+"Brady Patterson" <bpat@users.sourceforge.net>
+* AIFF file support
+
"Daisuke Shimamura" <Daisuke_Shimamura@nifty.com>
* id3 v1/v2 and i18n support in the XMMS plugin
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- <B><TT>flac</TT></B> is the command-line file encoder/decoder. The input to the encoder and the output to the decoder must either be RIFF WAVE format, or raw interleaved sample data. <B><TT>flac</TT></B> only supports linear PCM samples (in other words, no A-LAW, uLAW, etc.). Another restriction (hopefully short-term) is that the input must be 8, 16, or 24 bits per sample. This is not a limitation of the FLAC format, just the reference encoder/decoder.
+ <B><TT>flac</TT></B> is the command-line file encoder/decoder. The input to the encoder and the output to the decoder must either be RIFF WAVE format, AIFF, or raw interleaved sample data. <B><TT>flac</TT></B> only supports linear PCM samples (in other words, no A-LAW, uLAW, etc.). Another restriction (hopefully short-term) is that the input must be 8, 16, or 24 bits per sample. This is not a limitation of the FLAC format, just the reference encoder/decoder.
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- <B><TT>flac</TT></B> assumes that files ending in ".wav" or that have the RIFF WAVE header present are WAVE files; this may be overridden with a command-line option; it also assumes that files ending in ".ogg" are Ogg-FLAC files. Other than this, <B><TT>flac</TT></B> makes no assumptions about file extensions, though the convention is that FLAC files have the extension ".flac" (or ".fla" on ancient file systems like FAT-16).
+ <B><TT>flac</TT></B> assumes that files ending in ".wav" or that have the RIFF WAVE header present are WAVE files, and files ending in ".aif" or ".aiff" or have the AIFF header present are in AIFF files. This may be overridden with a command-line option. It also assumes that files ending in ".ogg" are Ogg-FLAC files. Other than this, <B><TT>flac</TT></B> makes no assumptions about file extensions, though the convention is that FLAC files have the extension ".flac" (or ".fla" on ancient file systems like FAT-16).
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Before going into the full command-line description, a few other things help to sort it out: 1) <B><TT>flac</TT></B> encodes by default, so you must use <B>-d</B> to decode; 2) the options <B><TT>-0</TT></B> .. <B><TT>-8</TT></B> (or <B><TT>--fast</B></TT> and <B><TT>--best</B></TT>) that control the compression level actually are just synonyms for different groups of specific encoding options (described later) and you can get the same effect by using the same options; 3) <B><TT>flac</TT></B> behaves similarly to gzip in the way it handles input and output files.
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Also, you can force output data to go to stdout using <TT>-c</TT>.
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- <P>The encoding options affect the compression ratio and encoding speed. The format options are used to tell <B><TT>flac</TT></B> the arrangement of samples if the input file (or output file when decoding) is a raw file. If it is a RIFF WAVE file the format options are not needed since they are read from the WAVE header.
+ <P>The encoding options affect the compression ratio and encoding speed. The format options are used to tell <B><TT>flac</TT></B> the arrangement of samples if the input file (or output file when decoding) is a raw file. If it is a RIFF WAVE or AIFF file the format options are not needed since they are read from the AIFF/WAVE header.
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In test mode, <B><TT>flac</TT></B> acts just like in decode mode, except no output file is written. Both decode and test modes detect errors in the stream, but they also detect when the MD5 signature of the decoded audio does not match the stored MD5 signature, even when the bitstream is valid.