ripping / encoding to flac

[gazzawazza]

hi all.

Ripping to FLAC - is this functionality broken?

In summary, I've been checking out VLC's "Convert / Save" abilities and have been able to rip a single audio CD track to .wav, .mp3 & .ogg successfully.

However, when I try using the "Audio - FLAC" profile, basically nothing happens after you click "Start". The Playlist reports "streaming" but no file gets created.

I have remembered to use a filename & extension (I've tried .flac and .raw). I have not ticked the "dump raw input" (because I didn't need to do that when ripping to mp3 / ogg, etc).

When I've successfully ripped to .mp3, you can hear the CD drive spin up, etc. That doesn't happen when trying to rip to .flac

I've also tried ripping from a file (e.g. .wav) to .flac - this doesn't work either, which makes me wonder whether FLAC encoding is broken (either that or I'm doing something dumb, which is probably the more likely of the two ).

As a related issue, I guess you cannot rip a whole CD through VLC at one go? I've tried but as you have to supply a filename & extension, each CD track is read & encoded then the destination file gets overwritten with the next track.

I'm using VLC v1.1.4 on vista 32bit.



Thanks,

Gary

PS I am aware of EAC for complete CD ripping and have used that great prog a lot... but was intrigued to see what one can do with VLC's recording / saving / encoding abilities, having managed to rip internet radio streams successfully (which is such an excellent feature).

[VLC_help]

As a related issue, I guess you cannot rip a whole CD through VLC at one go?

You can, but it requires some additional steps.

I've also tried ripping from a file (e.g. .wav) to .flac - this doesn't work either, which makes me wonder whether FLAC encoding is broken (either that or I'm doing something dumb, which is probably the more likely of the two ).

It works, but you have to use file extension like .mp3 for the output file since VLC is little buggy. I will send patch about this to mailing list ASAP.

[gazzawazza]

Thanks for the quick reply, VLC_Help

As a related issue, I guess you cannot rip a whole CD through VLC at one go?


You can, but it requires some additional steps.

Is there a link (e.g. to a wiki or forum thread) that describes the process?

I've also tried ripping from a file (e.g. .wav) to .flac - this doesn't work either, which makes me wonder whether FLAC encoding is broken (either that or I'm doing something dumb, which is probably the more likely of the two ).


It works, but you have to use file extension like .mp3 for the output file since VLC is little buggy. I will send patch about this to mailing list ASAP.

Right... I've just tested the situation and appear to have created a FLAC file directly from a .cda file (i.e. ripped directly from audio CD). I had to use a different extension (in this instance I used .mp3) but chose the profile "Audio - FLAC". The filesize would imply it's FLAC, rather than mp3, and VLC's track information indicates FLAC is being used to decode the track.

The only problem now is that the Track Duration is blank and, presumably because of this missing data, you can't move through the track. I'm afraid I'm working on the limits of my knowledge here but it seems some of the FLAC metadata is damaged / non-existent. However, I've successfully rebuilt the information by decompressing to .wav then re-encoding to FLAC (using other software).

Apologies for suggesting that FLAC encoding was broken - I had just expected to be able to choose that file extension (and not use mp3)!!

Thanks again mate.


Gary

[VLC_help]

Is there a link (e.g. to a wiki or forum thread) that describes the process?

Format string might work, but I haven't tested it.
http://wiki.videolan.org/Documentation: ... mat_String