converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

[Sossity]

I see another post about this, & if this is supported in the batch converter,

& here is a snippit from the article; & a link; http://www.macrumors.com/2011/10/27/...w-open-source/

[COLOR="*008000"]Apple's Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) Now Open Source
Thursday October 27, 2011 5:16 pm PDT by Arnold Kim
On MacOSForge, Apple has announced that they are releasing the Apple Lossless Audio Codec as an open source project:

The Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) is a lossless audio codec developed by Apple and deployed on all of its platforms and devices for some years now. Apple is making the Apple Lossless Audio Codec (ALAC) available as an open source project. Full details can be found on the Apple Lossless Audio Codec project page.
The Apple Lossless Audio Codec is a similar to other "lossless" codecs such as FLAC which offer audio compression without any loss in audio information. ALAC is said to compress files only by "about half" as compared to the originals.

Formats such as MP3 and AAC are considered "lossy" and result in much greater compression but at the cost of some fidelity. The main advantage of using ALAC over competing lossless formats is that ALAC is supported by all of Apple's iPods and iOS devices. The format had already been reverse engineered prior to this release, but this opens the door to even more products supporting both ALAC creation and playback.

The project has been released under the Apache license.
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it says ipods & other devices will support it if it is open source

I have an ipod, & had been ripping my albums in flac first & converting to mp3 to sync onto my ipod, but it would be nice to have them in an apple compatible lossless format as well.

would it be any benefit to me to convert my flac albums to Apple lossless as well? I have a windows program called dBpoweramp that can convert from one format to another.

would there be a loss in quality if I converted the flac files to have a set of apple lossless files of my albums?

would the loss be greater than if I re ripped my cd's to Apple lossless? this would be very tedious, & it would be easier for me to convert from my flac ripped albums to apple lossless without re ripping my cd's again.

right now, my lossless format is flac, & to compress or for lossy format for mp3 players I convert the flacs to mp3.

[Spoon]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

Lossless to lossless has no quality loss.

[BrodyBoy]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

Apple Lossless (often called ALAC) is just another lossless format....exact same quality as FLAC. The file sizes tend to run just a little bigger (compared to typical FLAC compression settings), but not significantly so. Don't ever convert your mp3 files to FLAC or ALAC; convert only your FLAC files.

I use ALAC extensively because it's the only format that's compatible with every kind of player I use. It's just a little more limited than FLAC in terms of tagging flexibility, but I suspect that's not something most users would notice. Just people like me who are obsessive about tagging their music.

[Sossity]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

will the Apple lossless be incorporated into the batch converter? I dont want to re rip all my 300+ Cd's all over again.

would there be much difference in quality/file size ripping directly to Apple lossless versus ripping to flac & converting to Apple lossless?

would converting from flac to apple lossless cause any loss in meta data & tags/album art? like the rip logs?

[BrodyBoy]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

Apple Lossless is already available in the Converter....has been as long as I've used it.

There's absolutely no difference in quality when you convert between lossless codecs, so it's going to be the same as if you ripped directly from the discs to ALAC.

Depending on how extensive your metadata is, you could potentially lose some tags. For example, ALAC doesn't allow multiple entries in most fields (as FLAC does), so if you have, for example, multiple ARTIST tags, it'll only grab the first one.

[Sossity]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

To prevent meta tag or meta data loss, could I add a DSP effect of preserve source? I saw one that had this

Also, what would be a good size to have my album art at? what format? My original album art is canned as .tiffs & jpgs, fro cross device playbility, would be best?

with my flac files, I would have my scanned jps of my album art, of which were large files, most over 2000 x 2000 pixels.

what would be best when converting to Apple lossless? can I keep the original large size? I would have the apple lossless files on an ipods ipod touches or other devices, would they have trouble with these sizes? if I choose a smaller size, in the DSP effects fro meta tag, what would be the best dimensions to set my album art to?

does it matter if the meta data & fields for meta data are in all caps, mixed caps, lower caps capital caps etc? what would be the most compatible for devices playing?

[BrodyBoy]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

Yeah, I think there is a DSP that will combine multiple field entries. If you have a lot of these, that would be the way to go if you're afraid of losing information.

I size my album art based on what my players like. Since I use Sonos players, which balk at album art larger than around 350Kb (it loads slow), I shoot for something between 100-200Kb. (Actual dimensions are less important than the file size.) I'm careful to select high-quality artwork, and 100-250kb always looks great on all my devices. I have some art that I scanned myself, as well, and like you, I scan at a fairly high resolution just to start with the best quality I can get. You can then scale it down to a more reasonable size in any photo editor.

Note that you can limit album art size in dBp, but I think you can only set max dimensions. That doesn't necessarily translate to the file size you want.

In terms of the formatting you use in tags, I suppose that's all just personal preference. Use whatever you find most readable.

[Sossity]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

how do you resize to just get a 250kb size? without altering dimensions?

[BrodyBoy]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

For our purposes, there are two factors that determine the file size: resolution, i.e. dots per inch, and dimensions. (It gets a little confusing because digital image dimensions are often expressed in pixels rather than a length units.) You could have a 3"x3" image that's 1200dpi and it's a huge file, or a 3"x3" image that's 300dpi and is a much smaller file. You've change the resolution, but not the dimensions. (On a computer or some little digital LCD screen, they look pretty much the same.)

So let's say you have an album cover that's high-resolution, like 600dpi, and the file size is bigger than you'd like. To make it smaller, you could resample it to 300dpi and you essentially cut the file size in half. For the ways that we use album art (displays on handheld players, iPads, etc.), you can easily scale down to 150dpi with hardly a perceptible loss in image quality.

On really big files, like those ones I scan, I use both methods to drastically shrink the file size- I resample to a lower resolution, and I change the dimensions as well.

[Sossity]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

so what file size & dimension do you suggest?

what if I want to see these on a computer monitor as well? although they would mostly be on devices.

[Sossity]

Re: converting my flac files to new apple lossless open source codec

Also, is the current Apple lossless in dbpoweramp the open source version?

or are they 2 different things, with dbpoweramp needing to be udated to the current version?

I am a little confused on this, as in another thread, some one mentioned that the apple lossless now is reverse engineered & not the new open source.

This may be a repeat post, but I did not get any relies in my thread about this, & I do not want to waste time converting & ripping to this format if it is not the current open source version.