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flacon / flacon

Audio File Encoder. Extracts audio tracks from an audio CD image to separate tracks.
GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1
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feature: support unsplit output (i.e. file per album) #98

Open brainchild0 opened 5 years ago

brainchild0 commented 5 years ago

The current function of Flacon is that it "extracts individual tracks from one big audio file containing the entire album". As few applications reliably perform this function, Flacon proves extremely beneficial to its users.

However, with little change in overall design, Flacon could be enhanced with a new feature supporting a case for generating output that preserves the mapping of one file per album.

While many applications will perform trancoding operations with a one-to-one relation of input files to output files, these applications are generally unable to rewrite cue sheets to preserve track boundaries and metadata while also using updated file names.

A mode of operation in Flacon such that output contains one audio file per album would help to support a broader range of uses for the application. Such uses include helping to manage the file names and tags of a source collection, and to create representations in more efficient encodings of a collection while still preserving the benefits of a single audio file for each album.

Note that two general cases present:

  1. The output is in the same encoding as the input. In this case, the value of the operation is in normalizing the tags and file names of the output. Note that special handling of this case would bypass the need for transcoding audio data. In fact, in some cases, output of audio data might occur by a simple file copy.
  2. The output is transcoded to a different encoding.

A third case is also possible:

  1. Although the output contains only a single audio file for an entire album, the input features a separate audio file for each track. This operation is the reverse of the standard and existing use of Flacon. A similar case was discussed in #59.

Practically, the last case may be more difficult to implement. However, as few or no applications reliably support such functionality, it could be extremely helpful.

(Even more generally, Flacon could, in principle, support the completely general set of four use cases, representing all combinations where input may either be file-per-album or file-per-track, and output may separately also be either of the two.)

SokoloffA commented 5 years ago

It's possible to add processing an album without splitting. But I'm not sure about the popularity of this feature. In any way, not just now, I don't have enough time now.

I added an answer about function for converting already split albums to the FAQ.

brainchild0 commented 5 years ago

You might consider the killer feature of Flacon to be conversion and management of music collections that are based on cue sheets. There is currently an enthusiastic community that is poorly served by existing software packages. My guess is that many of these features would be popular.

SokoloffA commented 5 years ago

I'll think about it bot, not just now.