Can't scan in FLAC files

[ledman]

Hi everyone

I'm having problems scanning in flac files on my Squeezebox Classic. All other formats scan in ok (mp3 and wav). No flac files appear in the squeezebox 'artist' or 'album' menus. The error message I get from the scanner logfile is "ERROR SCANNING <file.flac> Unable to read tags from file"

When I go to the squeezebox (SB) 'music location', the flac files are all there but when I try to play them from here the SB shuts down.

Some other info:

The Operating System is Ubuntu 9.04.

The music was imported from CD using Sound Juicer, which is the default Ubuntu CD importer. When I did this the track length and everything else imported properly. (All the info shows up in Rhythmbox, Amarak etc).

Sound Juicer is configured to use “GStreamer pipeline=audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! flacenc=enc” for converting to flac. I haven’t fiddled with this, it’s the default setting I get when I choose to import as flac using Sound Juicer.

Tags:

All of my flac files have Vorbis tags only. Some of the tags have been generated using the file structure and only have basic info, and other tags have full data from MusicBrainz.

When I open the flac files using a tag editor (I mainly use Kid3-qt, but have also used Entagged), the Vorbis tags appear ok but I've noticed that the track length / duration is missing from the Info header section. I've tried adding duration manually as a tag field (TLEN) but it doesn't work.

When I use a window browser (eg nautilus) and 'right click -> properties -> audio' on flac files, the duration appears. The duration also appears when I use any music players such as Rhythmbox and Amarak.

It seems to me that this missing track length in the tag is the key.

I tried converting a flac file to mp3 and the track length magically appears in an Info header of the tag. The mp3 files scans in properly to the SB. But when I convert the mp3 back to flac the duration goes missing again.

I've also tried importing wav files and this works fine, even though the wav files don't have tags.

File structure:

Music/Artist/Album/track number - name.flac
eg Music/Air/Talkie Walkie/01 - track 1.flac

File permissions:

flac files: -rw-r--r--
I also ran “chmod -R a+rX .” from the top level Music folder as advised by the slimdevices wiki to ensure they were readable by squeezeboxserver.

The flac files and mp3 files and folders all have the same permissions.

folders: drwxr-xr-x for all mp3 and flac


User groups:

The squeezeboxserver directories belong to the group "nogroup" and the owner is "squeezeboxserver - SqueezeBox"

I’ve tried running SB as the superuser but it makes no difference – I still can’t scan in flac files and I get the same error message.


Please help! I don’t want to use mp3 – I can hear the difference.

Ledman

[Mnyb]

I'm ripping with Ryburipper or Grip on Ubuntu 8.04 it's easy to install other rippers.

I tag with mp3tag, a windows program, but it runs fine under wine (an app that runs win programs under ubuntu).

I have no problems with my flac files ?

Edit: thanks for the tip on kid3-qt and Entagged, going to try them, all other tagging apps I've found for Linux has been rubbish

[ledman]

Hi Mnyb

Regarding tagging, I use MusicBrainz Picard to grab the tags and Kid3-qt for tweaking. Both programs seem ok. The other program I used a few times is Entagged which seems a bit harder to use. I haven't compared these with any Windows competitors to comment. I've certainly had no probs with wine so could consider some Windows taggers if that would help me sort out my probs.

I'm still unable to scan in flac files. I hear that 7.4.2 will be released soon so hopefully that works a bit better for me.

Ledman

[andyg]

Please try 7.4.2 nightly to see if it solves your problem. If not, please file a bug and attach a short file demonstrating the problem.

http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=7.4

[matka]

I'm ripping with Ryburipper or Grip on Ubuntu 8.04 it's easy to install other rippers.

I tag with mp3tag, a windows program, but it runs fine under wine (an app that runs win programs under ubuntu).

I have no problems with my flac files ?

Edit: thanks for the tip on kid3-qt and Entagged, going to try them, all other tagging apps I've found for Linux has been rubbish

Did you try EasyTag ?

[Mnyb]

Did you try EasyTag ?

Yes, did not like it that much, I like mp3tag or tag&rename thats the benchmarks for me,

[ledman]

Hi Andyg

I tried 7.4.2 a few days ago and it didn't work - most flac files still won't scan in. I went back to 7.4.1.

Matka in the Linux/Unix section suggested viewing the output from "metaflac --list track01.flac | more" and this gave some interesting results.

I should add that I have a handful of flac files that scan in ok, although scanner.log says "Invalid MusicBrainz tag found in <...>: MUSICBRAINZ_ALBUMID ->" (same goes for all other MusicBrainz fields). They still seem to scan in and play ok on the SB Classic though.

When I compare the metaflac output of flac files that pass and others that fail, I see the following differences:

METADATA block #0
* "framesize"
all fails have framesizes = 0
all passes have framesizes > 0
* "total samples"
all fails = 0
all passes > 0
* "MD5 signature"
fails = 00000000000000000000000000000000
passes > 0
METADATA block #1
* "vendor string"
fails = reference libFLAC 1.1.2 20050205
passes = reference libFLAC 1.2.1 20070917

Note the different in libFLAC versions for passes and fails. All the flac files that scan in properly use libFLAC 1.2.1 and all the flacs that fail to scan use libFLAC 1.1.2.

Does anyone know if libFLAC 1.1.2 is meant to read in flac files ok with the SB Classic?

I ripped most of my music from CD using Sound Juicer in Breezy Badger. I ripped a few more CDs recently when I upgraded to Jaunty (which also has a version of Sound Juicer). Maybe this change from Breezy to Jaunty upgraded libFLAC and it turns out that the Squeezebox Classic won't work with libFLAC 1.1.2?

Ta,
Ledman

PS: There is a more detailed thread in the Linux section with the same title. (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=74783)

[andyg]

Total Samples = 0? Sounds like an invalid file, I'll need to see one to figure out the problem.

[ledman]

Hi Andyg

I tried f re-running my flac files through flac (1.2.1) and they now scan into SB Classic ok. Here is what I did:

metaflac "FLACFILE" --export-tags-to=/tmp/flactags.txt
flac -d "FLACFILE" -o /tmp/tmpwav.wav
flac --best /tmp/tmpwav.wav -o "FLACFILE"
metaflac "FLACFILE" --import-tags-from=/tmp/flactags.txt
rm /tmp/tmpwav.wav /tmp/flactags.txt

This gave an error message about the MD5sum failing or not existing because it was removed by/at STREAMINFO ? (sorry, I can't remember exacly. I had the error message saved on my ipod, which decided to make some bad whirring noises this morning and does not work now).

Despite the MD5sum error everything worked ok. I now have flac files that scan into my SB Classic with no problems. The scanner.log file is clean for these convered flac files - it says they scanned in fine. The tags are ok and readable as well.

Not sure if it recovered the MD5sum properly or not, I went to bed when the flac files scanned in properly (it was midnight). I can check later.

My conclusion is that flac 1.2.1 works with SB Classic and 1.1.2 does not work.

I will attempt to later mail you some flac files ripped using the Sound Juicer and flac 1.1.2 package that came with Breezy Badger, so you can have a play with them. They were on my ipod which just died though.

PS: I'm on holiday for a week now so things will be a bit quiet from me for a bit.

Cheers,
Ledman