Re: [Gtkpod-devel] Re: How to use wave files with gtkpod?

[Nicola F. <nic...@va...>]

hi

On Fri, 2003-11-07 at 14:41, Jorg Schuler wrote:
> gtkpod cannot do it. There don't seem to be too many people interested
> in using wav files...

after having listened to some good mp3 files I know why - the iPod just
sounds too good! :)

> > I found out right now that flac >= 1.1.0 (at least 1.0.2 doesn't) seems
> > to support vorbis-like comments - so this should be the correct way to
> > go (without forgetting a hack for not-so-clean id3 tags :).
> 
> I'm sorry -- I'm not sure I'm getting your point here.

sorry, my line of thought was actually a bit confusing, I must admit.

so, let me try again: FLAC is a lossless audio compressor. It supports
ogg-vorbis-like tags for storing metadata. gtkpod could use this
information for the iTunes DB and transparently uncompress FLAC files to
store them on the iPod as WAVE files. 

> I have no idea about the structure of a wav-file, and whether TAGs can
> be stored in them or not.

WAVE files can contain cue-lists, which in turn can contain an embedded
file.

But as a fast research on the net did not show any relevant software
being capable of tagging wave files nor anybody seemingly to use (or
even want) embedded files to tag wave files, this idea does not need to
be followed up.

> As for gtkpod: I'm currently defining some kind of interface that
> allows adding support to new formats to gtkpod more easily. Have a
> look at the notes at the start of mp4file.c.

I will have a look at it.

> I don't think we should start designing ways to store metadata into
> wav files if a standard does not already exists. Instead I would
> prefer to improve and customize the interpretation of the filename.

I don't disagree, this will surely not hurt overall usability.

FLAC support would be great because 
a) it's a great way of archiving lossless audio (1:2 compression)
and b) it supports natively storing metadata (vorbis-style).

Workflow would be like this:

A) archive music
1. use grip (or another software) to rip cds to wave files
2. configure grip to compress file with FLAC
3. configure grip to save CDDB data to the metadata container of the
FLAC file

B) transfer music from archive to iPod
1. gtkpod reads metadata (CDDB data) from FLAC file and updates
iTunesDB.
2. at export time, gtkpod uncompresses FLAC file transparently to the
iPod as WAV file.

Please, correct me if this somehow contradicts how gtkpod currently
handles things (the "manual" is not too clear about things :)...

So, maybe I'll have a look at this interface and hack something to
support FLAC.

regards
nicola