Transcoding Flac to Wav

[micalb]

Can anyone tell me how to setup 4.6 beta2 to transcode Flac music files to Wav instead of the default mp3?

any help is welcome!

Thanks

Michiel

[micalb]

In addition to the above i want to mention that i want to stream the flac files to the isub app on my ipod touch and iphone

[Skywatcher]

Hi Michiel,

I don't think you can stream a Flac file, or a Wav file. If I'm not mistaken the format simply doesn't allow streaming.
MP3 does. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

All solutions I know that allow hearing a Flac file remotely first transfer the whole file to the local PC/Player and only then play it. But that is Download+Play and not streaming.

[asayler]

You should be able to stream flac and wav without issues. You can stream anything, assuming you have a player that will handle it.

Note, however, that the built in webplayer does not play either flac or wav files. Thus, you will need to use an external player to make this work.

I had both flac and wav streaming working fine under Subsonic 4.5. I am having issues with this under 4.6 (viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8533). But there are no inherent streaming prohibitions on flac or wav. They "should" work.

-Andy

[GJ51]

Subsonic can transcode to either mp3 or ogg. I can't recall anyone transcoding to anything but these two. I transcode to mp3 for desktop playback and use ogg for mobile.

mp3 > ogg | ffmpeg -v 0 -i %s -f ogg -vn -acodec libvorbis -ar 44100 -aq 5 -ac 2 -map_meta_data 0:0 -

You can adjust the quality by using 1 - 9 after - aq I think -aq 5 is about 90 - 100 kbps.

ogg provides great quality at low bandwidth, very efficient.

I've also done flac > ogg in previous versions with success.

[micalb]

Thanks for the replies, i'm happy to read that it is still possible.

Can you also tell me how to set this up in the server configuration?

I don't know the correct way to do this

Thanks in advance

Michiel

[GJ51]

Thanks for the replies, i'm happy to read that it is still possible.

Can you also tell me how to set this up in the server configuration?

I don't know the correct way to do this

Thanks in advance

Michiel

I'm not sure what you're trying to do based on all the replies. Do you want to transcode to mp3 or ogg, or do you want to stream directly to an external player?

[asayler]

Using Ubuntu 11.10 with ffmpeg and flac both installed (sudo apt-get install flac ffmpeg), I use the following transcoding setup to transcode flac to wav:

Code: Select all

Name ------- Convert From -------- Convert To ------- Step 1 ------- Step 2
wav>flav     flac                  wav                flac -d -c %s  <None>


You probably want to avoid checking the "Enable this transcoding for all existing and new players" box or else you will screw up the webplayer (and anything else that won't support wav) until you manually change it's transcoder settings.

Then setup a new External Player (in my experience, this works best in the "with playlist" mode) and make the new wav>flac the only Active Transcoder for the player. Go back to your library, select the new External player from the player dropdown below the browsing screen, and add some tracks. This should trigger the download of a .m3u playlist file. Open this file with VLC (or experiment with other external players), and you should be good to go.

At least in 4.5... Under 4.6, I get it to play the first few seconds of each song, and then it skips to the next track. See the link in my previous post. Let me know if you can make it work.

If you run into errors, check your logs, and make sure that flac is installed and sim-linked into the Subsonic transcoders directory. If you're running Subsonic on a non-Linux machine, you may have to tweak some of the previous steps, although the concept should still work.

-Andy

[micalb]

another thanks for all the help.
I followed the above steps and it works fine.
I can now stream my Flac files to the Isub player on my I devices just fine!

greetings

Michiel

[asayler]

I followed the above steps and it works fine.
I can now stream my Flac files to the Isub player on my I devices just fine!

Glad its working. Mind if I ask what OS (Name and Version) you are hosting Subsonic on? I'm still trying to track down a bug in my setup.

-Andy

[micalb]

My operating system is Windows server 2003

gr

Michiel

[asayler]

My operating system is Windows server 2003

Interesting. I wonder if the issue is limited to Linux-hosted installs. I'm still trying to make this work here: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8533&p=34946.

Has anyone been able to transcode flac to wav and stream the result without error to an external player with playlist on a Linux-hosted Subsonic 4.6 install?