FLAC Track Length

[PJPro]

I'm fairly new to TVersity and became interested in it as a media server as I wanted to stream flac files from my PC to my PS3. I have encountered one or two issues along the way but have managed to overcome them. However, I now have an issue with the length of FLAC tracks which has me stumped!

OK. So I rip CDs to flac using EAC. I place the files in a folder and then point TVersity at the folder and refresh the library. Occasionally I find that the track length is not displayed. Any track that does not display a track length will end prematurely when streamed to the PS3 (although will play to the end of the track using TVersity). The PS3 actually displays a track length of 9:59'.59''.

I found a work around to this problem on this forum. The work around is to convert the flac file to another flac file using Foobar. And until now this has worked for me i.e. after re-encoding using Foobar the track length is displayed and the track will play correctly on the PS3.

However, I have now found a track that this work around will not fix. This track is "Better Man" from the album "Heathen Chemistry" by Oasis.

I would be grateful if anyone has any ideas about how I can go about sorting this problem out or can provide an explanation stating how TVersity calculates the length of a flac track or provide any theories relating to how foobar corrects the issue (in 99% of instances).

I am mystified as EAC and Foobar are both using flac.exe to encode the files. My guess is that the arguments used must be slightly different. However, it does not explain why using Foobar does not sort this particular track out.

Your comments will be much appreciated.

[bluedha]

TVersity takes flac files and transcode them on the fly as PCM and stream it to PS3.
I had this problem and I couldn't figure out why some flac files would work flawlessly and why some would have the exact same problem you just described.
I believe it has to do with either (or both) the version of the flac used to encode or the encoded setting of flac.

Here's how to test whether a flac file would work or not.

Download and install Mediainfo: http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en. After installation, right click on a flac file and choose mediainfo. Mediainfo will pop up with the file's information. Change the view to sheet, as it is more useful. If the file's format is FLAC and audio codec is FLAC and it says 44.1 khz, 2 ch, FLAC. It will stream fine. The files that did not work for me had none of those information.

Here's how to solve the problem.

Download and install FLAC: http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html. If you already have it, good. Open up FLAC Frontend. Leave everything as default and add the flac file that does not work. Click on decode. This, of course, creates an uncompressed wav file of the same name. Now simply add the wav file and click encode (Make sure the original flac file is rename or deleted). Check the file again with mediainfo, it should have the missing information. That's it, rescan your music folder and play from PS3.

I JUST did what I just described and the files that were cutting short are displayed with correct time and play to the end.

[PJPro]

Yes. Thanks for the reply.

The issue with the track length is usually due to additonal seek points being placed in the flac file metadata. If you use metaface to anaylse a file before and after your fix you will find the file that works has had one of the blacks removed ie the block containing the seek points.

The version sensitivity of flac is due to the release of the --ignore-chunk-sizes argument within flac 1.2. This sorts the issue of dodgy wav files that were causing the problem in the first place.

However, this has nothing to do with my issue. Better Man is a funny track. The whole track is 32 minutes long. However, it contains about 25 minutes of total silence in the middle. I just become aware of this tonight. Effectively, there is a secret track on the end of the album.

I used Audacity to snip out this silence and converted the much smaller wav file to flac using foobar2000. Placed this new 9 minute file into TVersity and bob's your uncle...the length of the file is now shown.

So, for some reason, the long silence in the track was causing an issue somewhere. Not sure why. After all the track length is calculated by taking the total number of samples and dividing it by the sample rate per second (I think).

Anyway, thanks again for your reply. Incidently, my adventures with TVersity, flac, PS3 and EAC can be found here if you are interested

[DAP]

Here's how to test whether a flac file would work or not.

Download and install Mediainfo: http://mediainfo.sourceforge.net/en. After installation, right click on a flac file and choose mediainfo. Mediainfo will pop up with the file's information. Change the view to sheet, as it is more useful. If the file's format is FLAC and audio codec is FLAC and it says 44.1 khz, 2 ch, FLAC. It will stream fine. The files that did not work for me had none of those information.

This does not work for RC2. The example file I have been playing with (see this thread: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=11309) shows all of this information correctly with MediaInfo, yet still shows up as 9:59:59 for the duration on the PS3.

I'm still downloading the FLAC encoder (slightly different version than I had been using) to see if that makes a difference.

[DAP]

Here's how to solve the problem.

Download and install FLAC: http://flac.sourceforge.net/download.html. If you already have it, good. Open up FLAC Frontend. Leave everything as default and add the flac file that does not work. Click on decode. This, of course, creates an uncompressed wav file of the same name. Now simply add the wav file and click encode (Make sure the original flac file is rename or deleted). Check the file again with mediainfo, it should have the missing information. That's it, rescan your music folder and play from PS3.

This did not work for me either. The track I am experimenting with is "a stroke of luck" by Garbage from the album of the same name. It was ripped by "Exact Audio Copy".
I used the FLAC program downloaded from the link above to decode, then reencode the file (to a different file name). I get the same results with this new FLAC file as I did the original.

[stant]

This did not work for me either. The track I am experimenting with is "a stroke of luck" by Garbage from the album of the same name. It was ripped by "Exact Audio Copy".
I used the FLAC program downloaded from the link above to decode, then reencode the file (to a different file name). I get the same results with this new FLAC file as I did the original.

I ended up converting FLAC to WavPack (using foobar) and then renaming .wv file to .mp2. That finally worked. That was the only way for me to get lossless audio with tversity (except for wav, of course).
I hope this annoying issue will be fixed in upcoming release and flac/vw/ape will be supported normally...

[Paul_A/V]

I am not able to play my lossless Wavpack music on my PS3 either. I encode my music to both WMA 10 Pro for uploading to my Zune and Wavpack for high fidelity audio playback on my home system. One of the big reasons I went with TVersity was it's support of a wide array of codecs. I don't see why I should have to rename all of my Wavpack files with a .mp2 extension. Can anyone verify if this is an official bug? Maybe I'll take a stroll over to the bug Topic.

[wahla21]

I have the problem that my PS3/Tversity only plays some flac files.
The ones I rip myself works fine but some files I download don't work.

Why is that?

[Lassel]

I have also the same problem,,, and it is only when I am using Tversity this problem appears. MediaMonkey, WPM ,, whatever,, seems not to have this problem..

//lasse