FLAC, SHN, Conversions, etc...A virtual potpourri

[RainDawg]

Originally Posted by Greengoat

But is it okay to make ffp of older shows and include this fingerprint with the show? Just curious, since there is a slight possibility, as remote as it may be, that my flac files do not match the original. Or is flac so new that making a ffp now, is better than not making one at all, assuming the ffp just wasn't included in a burn sometime down the road from the original.

Yes, it's not only OK but it's required for FLAC seeds here to have an ffp for inclusion with the seed. Note that creating an ffp is just taking the checksum text that is contained within the FLAC's header....it is calculated at encoding, not when you create an ffp. So the only way this value would not match what is contained in the file is if the file itself is corrupted, which can be checked with Frontend's "Test" command.

It is very possible that the FLAC files you have are not identical to the original, but the only way this would happen is if someone took the originals, converted to wav, and screwed around with them before converting back to FLAC. If this is the case, it should be noted in the lineage that the fingerprints of the files you have are different than the original seed because the audio was changed.

The ideology here is that you get the accurate lineage info, and then make the ffp for posting on the site. That way, at any point in the future, someone can check back and say "yes, I have an identical version to what was posted to TTD on xxxx-xx-xx". If we are able to attain a reputation (as etree has done) as only hosting fingerrpints of good seeds, than this will be enough for future traders to trust the material they have as well as check information and verify they have an identical one.

[Five]

Okay, here I am doing my 1st conversion using foobar. I had to tinker around a bit, first thing I did was make a new preset with compression level 8 and the recommended 4096 bytes of padding. This I did by going to foobar2000 > preferences > diskwriter > Output Presets > Add new Then I set it to keep the filename and folder the same as the source (see screenshot)...

[Five]

Then I used this Bit-compare tracks function. I like what it does, but is there some way to make the output easier to read? I was squinting for five minutes trying to find the bits that say "No differences in decoded data found." I eventually copied the output to a notepad .txt file and used the search function while counting how many time I had tapped on the "Find next" button. For each file I'm getting an output like this:

INFO (foo_bitcompare) : Comparing:
INFO (foo_bitcompare) : location: "file://C:\Documents and Settings\Grace\Desktop\jamiestuff\Police - 1977 BBC Rock Hour\Track 10.shn" (0)
INFO (foo_bitcompare) : location: "file://C:\Documents and Settings\Grace\Desktop\jamiestuff\Police - 1977 BBC Rock Hour\Track 10.flac" (0)
INFO (foo_shn) : cannot find / read external metadata tag file
INFO (foo_shn) : internal seektable will be used.
INFO (foo_bitcompare) : No differences in decoded data found.
INFO (foo_bitcompare) : Finished successfully.

[Five]

Originally Posted by RainDawg

Bottom line: Get foobar2000, get used to it, get over the utilitarian design, and start delving into the many features it has. Make sure you use the ColumnsUI graphical interface, and then go ahead and setup your own formatting scripts. A little bit of time spent learning how to configure this awesome program will be rewarded with years of being far more efficient with your lossless filetrading endeavors....

*grumbles* yes, foobar is a useful tho not beautiful tool.

[TheMamba]

Originally Posted by Five

*grumbles* yes, foobar is a useful tho not beautiful tool.

I have the dBpowerAMP Music Converter on my computer, but I don't really use it much anymore, because the conversions are slow as hell with it. Only reason I keep it around is because it provides killer stats on holding your mouse over the file for all filetypes it has codecs for. Tell me it isn't cool to see this upon holding your mouse over one of your audio files:



Oh, if anyone wants to make foobar2000 look prettier, yet has problems using any of the GUI replacement plugins for foobar, I recommend installing a program like WindowBlinds or StyleXP to skin your OS, and pick some skin you like.

[starman714]

I never knew foobar could do all of that , and a lot of 'that' is
well over my head still. I just d/l and installed it a few days ago
at someone else's recommendation... I just really wanted to say
thanks for the question and the in-depth answer ; I'm saving these
2 pages as a referance guide.

[Five]

that is a great feature of dbpoweramp, I never knew about that! This is much better than the similar mp3infp which I've been using for the past couple years.

Yes, this thread has been quite educational. This will most likely show up somewhere at TTD as a slightly more organized tutorial in the near future.

[RainDawg]

Originally Posted by Five

*grumbles* yes, foobar is a useful tho not beautiful tool.

Well, I agree with you that the output from BitVerify is not pretty...I was a little dissapointed when I saw that I head to read all that. The good thing, Fiver, is that it just means no one's been able to program it, so you can step and write a plugin to use BitVerify and output to a nice pretty window .

Seriously, people must understand that this is an open source, community built player that is not even to v1 yet. It's a little rough around the edges but the functionality is awesome, and once you get used to it, not so hard to use.

[Five]

yeah, no arguments. I wish I could program a better window. I also realized that there's an option "beep on errors"... now all I've got to do is induce it to make an error and check that it does indeed beep then I can have peace of mind that no beep means perfect verify.

Originally Posted by TheMamba

I have been using FLAC frontend to test and decode FLAC files (and multi front end for SHN). I'll skip all of the Replaygain, and SBE questions as I saw some of that floating around here and in the FAQ.

If you are already using Multi-Frontend for SHN then use it for FLAC too. There seems to be a common misconception out there that you need FLAC Frontend too, but you don't. FLAC Frontend is best if you are making FLAC files from WAV files as a seeder. If you are just a lumpen downloader of FLAC files, Multi-frontend is all you will ever need. You can also use it to convert from SHN to FLAC.

In order to test your FLAC files prior to conversion get MD5check available at my web page.

[Five]

In order to verify if your files are 100% identical after conversion, use foobar2000
http://www.thetradersden.org/forums/...ead.php?t=1112

In fact, foobar2000 can do everything multi-frontend can do and more (correct me if I'm wrong here )

Why use foobar if you are already using Multi-frontend? I use foobar for playing but I plan to stick with multi-frontend for my conversions.

[Five]

because foobar can do bit-verifications after the conversion whereas Multi-frontend cannot. Follow the link in my previous post, a verified conversion is a better conversion.

[RainDawg]

Yeah, why use multi-frontend at all when foobar2000 can do everything, including conversions and tagging (and maintaining tags in the new files) and can also confirm your files are acoustically identical.

I use foobar for everything.