FLAC Metatags altered by WL7

kj1 · October 19, 2011, 9:02am

I have tested the following:

as soon as I make a change to a FLAC-file (audio or tags) within WL7 and save the file subsequently,
some file attributes - Metatags are lost.
I have pictures included in the FLAC Metadata, referenced as “Album Art”, after saving in WL, the pictures disappear.

Is this a bug PG?

A further issue with FLAC files is:
when I add a new field (e.g. fieldname=“NewField”, content= “Test”) to the FLAC Metatags (e.g. within foobar2000) which is common practice for FLAC files, WL is not able anymore to open the FLAC file.
The error message is “The file cannot be opened. The format is unknown or WaveLab could not find a suitable decoder on your system”.
BTW, WL7 does not allow either to add new fields to FLAC Metatags.
Is this in contradiction with FLAC Metatag (“Vorbis comments”) definition

Any tag name is allowed, and there is no format that the data values must be in. This is in contrast to the ID3 format used for MP3s, which is highly structured. Field names are also permitted to be used more than once. It is encouraged to use this feature to support multiple values, for example two ARTIST=… fields to list both artists of a single composition.

from Wikipedia.

Thanks

Jean

PG1 · October 19, 2011, 9:18am

WaveLab does not currently support pictures in FLAC files.
I have to check this. Not normal. The file should be able to be loaded.

Concerning “Any tag name is allowed”, WaveLab does not support this for the time being.

kj1 · October 19, 2011, 11:52am

WaveLab does not currently support pictures in FLAC files.

and

Concerning “Any tag name is allowed”, WaveLab does not support this for the time being.

Will there be a full FLAC support in WL in the near future?

Thanks
Jean

PG1 · October 19, 2011, 12:09pm

Yes, I plan to support more meta data for all audio file types, inc. Flac.

kj1 · October 19, 2011, 1:29pm

Great!

Thank you PG!

Jean

PG1 · October 24, 2011, 6:50am

FYI, I made a quick test and had no problem opening a FLAC file in WaveLab, that contains extra meta-data field.

kj1 · October 24, 2011, 7:55am

Hello Philippe,

I had several FLAC test files of 10 sec duration.

Some could be imported into WL, others couldn’t.

Although Metatags and field content were different, comparing the tags, I couldn’t make out any significant difference.

Then I realized that the problem files had Album Art included.

After deleting Album Art in Windows explorer (Properties), I was able to import the files into Wavelab.

This points again to a problem how Pictures are handeled.

Kind regards
Jean

zoundman · October 29, 2011, 8:04pm

PG
Now that ALAC (Apple Lossless) has gone open source, do you plan to support it?

PG1 · October 30, 2011, 5:36am

Yes. Note that wavelab can already open alac files.

zoundman · October 30, 2011, 5:09pm

Excellent!
Thanks PG

ceeboks · October 31, 2011, 3:42pm

thought there’s no need to open a new thread concerning flacs…

i converted a wav-file using wavelab and dbpoweramp. as the size of the flac files are different, i’d like to know (guess it’s the metatags which are different) what metatags, or file-headers being written by wavelab and dbpoweramp or how they differ?
dbpoweramp or the properties window of windows are showing the same metatag informations.
so where lies the difference?
the size of the flacs vary around 100kb…

pwhodges · October 31, 2011, 4:52pm

Flac files can also vary in size depending on how hard the compression algorithm is set to work.

Paul

ceeboks · October 31, 2011, 5:42pm

same compression level on both, of course.

PG1 · October 31, 2011, 5:45pm

Maybe that’s not the same FLAC version (WaveLab uses the latest).

ceeboks · November 2, 2011, 4:44pm

dbpoweramp v14 uses flac 1.2.1…
both wavelab and dbpoweramp compressing with level 5 and using flac version 1.2.1 should poduce the same filesize, i guess.
but it’s not.
why the differences?
no big thing as the decompressed wavs are of same size, but there has to be a reason for that…

PG1 · November 2, 2011, 7:56pm

Wavelab does not include a seek table, that is maybe the difference. In 7.2, wavelab will include this, btw.

ceeboks · November 4, 2011, 8:14am

i did some comparison with foobar2000. both flac-files, either compressed with dbpoweramp or wavelab, show no id-tags but the same metatags including the same audio md5.
although i did not found a seek table in the with dbpoweramp compressed file, it might add up to the difference…

valsolim · November 6, 2011, 1:27pm

Hello,

some ID tags are lost also when a WAV file is processed with the Batch Processor: namely Track Number and Album Name. My input WAV files have these attributes filled for sure, but there is no Track and no Album filled in the output files, although most of the tags (Title, Artist, Year, etc.) are kept correctly. I’m speaking about WL 7.1.1.

Best regards

Miloslav

PG1 · November 9, 2011, 3:15pm

some ID tags are lost also when a WAV file is processed with the Batch Processor: namely Track Number and Album Name. My input WAV files have these attributes filled for sure, but there is no Track and no Album filled in the output files, although most of the tags (Title, Artist, Year, etc.) are kept correctly. I’m speaking about WL 7.1.1

.

I can’t reproduce this. Are you sure yo are using this option?..

What software created the file with these tags, WaveLab?

valsolim · November 9, 2011, 3:56pm

I’m afraid you misunderstood me since I didn’t write it explicitly (sorry, it’s my fault): my output format is also WAV, not FLAC.

The source WAV file was tagged with dbpowerAmp (R14.2).

–
Miloslav