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Topic: Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files (Read 6008 times) previous topic - next topic
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Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Hi, I have recently had a dvd-r forwarded to me in the mail containing a couple compilations of audio flac files. They function perfectly and programs (foobar) play them as expected (off of my HD) until i attempt to do a few things. Symptoms as follows:

I have had the intent of burning audio cds and the more i tried the more i came to realize something is wrong with these files. Burning to audio cd with foobar causes it to get stuck in the process. foobar does not crash but i need to force shut-it off. Then my dvd burner is non responsive so i need to restart the pc to gt the cd-r ejected.

I have then burned the audio compilation with nero, and it does not have that issue. It burns fine, only apparently though. Burning an audio cd successfully in nero, what happens is on several tracks (out of about 14, 8 might suffer from this) the length appears to be the full length although the audio sound drops out completely. It occasionally returns on the same track. I re-examined everything when i burned with nero and found that when nero shows the audio compilation in the pre-burn window, the track lengths are shortened. I should mention that off the HD the flac files work fine though.

Then i tried converting these files to mp3 and wav. Once in wav format burning in nero had the exact same issues with the flac files, namely the audio cd turned out with lengthy silences.

I am trying to remember what the results were when i converted to mp3, I think i recall them being probably fine.

Anyway, i really hope someone can offer some insight into this. I doubt they are completely corrupted, and there must be a way to make a properly functioning audio cd from these flacs.

Thank you very much.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #1 –
Sounds like your burner is having problems.  If you can convert to another format and the audio is fine then the FLAC is not at fault.  FLAC also contains checksums to verify integrity and I'm pretty sure any program that can play or convert FLAC would throw an error.

Have you tried burning with another burner / computer?

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #2 –
Thanks for the reply.


Could a source of the problem also be the fact that the person who sent this to me burned it on a Mac, and i run xp?

I can't say for sure, but personally i doubt that my burner may be to blame. It burns audio cds for me frequently, and i can assert that they function perfectly. The crashing foobar is what initially alerted me of this problem, which has never happened before.

further troubleshooting:

I can verify this for certain, i analyzed everything carefully: I took a flac, put it in foobar cuelist, then converted it with dbpoweramp into wav files and then took those put them on the next part of the cuelist. I compared timings of each single track and some of the wav files were definitely shorter. Also, i noticed that the progress bar in dbpoweramp when converting skipped suddenly a few times. In addition to this i made an audio cd in nero from the flacs and the missing timings corresponded to the missing timings. Some tracks were even unplayable on the audio cd.

To me that looks like a faulty flac original file. But what bothers me is that the original flac file plays perfectly on the PC. After conversion, troubles abound (foobar gives error mssgs on certain tracks "Error decoding source file (Unsupported format or corrupted file) " when doing to mp3).

I am going to attempt to burn the disc on the laptop i have instead next.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #3 –
I believe errors in the flac stream would be consistent with the problems you are describing.  Some decoders fail gracefully (inserting a momentary gap when hitting bad data) and some fail ungracefully.

flac -t *.flac from the command line to test all your files in the directory.  I rather expect you will find errors.
Creature of habit.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #4 –
Quote
flac -t *.flac from the command line to test all your files in the directory. I rather expect you will find errors.


Im unfamiliar with the process. Can you tell me what i should do to test these?

One thing i still have yet to understand: Are they corrupted or not? They function perfectly until you go and do something with them, it just makes no sense.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #5 –
Wouldn't doing something with them and it failing disqualify them from functioning perfectly?

I'd also recommend testing from the command line.

If you use the flac front end, you have the option to decode through errors.  What happens if you try this?
"You can fight without ever winning, but never win without a fight."  Neil Peart  'Resist'

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #6 –
Quote
Wouldn't doing something with them and it failing disqualify them from functioning perfectly?


Yes, but they play perfectly fine on a pc if they remain untampered with.

Quote
I'd also recommend testing from the command line.

If you use the flac front end, you have the option to decode through errors. What happens if you try this?


Could you explain/detail the procedure. I tried figuring it out and couldn't.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #7 –
Such a Strange problem,I am not sure how to dill with this.But I suggest you to try to burn with EAC,which is one of the best Audio-Burner software,or Burnatonce and Furio are value to try.
Sorry for my bad english.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #8 –
Quote from: P.joman on
I suggest you to try to burn with EAC,which is one of the best Audio-Burner software,or Burnatonce and Furio are value to try.


Until such point in time that the files are verified as being error free, randomly throwing more programs into the mix is not helpful.

Quote
Could you explain/detail the procedure. I tried figuring it out and couldn't.

I ASSume the windows command line commands are the same as the linux ones.  (Does windows have the ability to redirect stdout and stderr different places?  I don't think it does.)

You have failed to mention twice now what you have tried, what you are familiar with, and where exactly in the process I earlier mentioned you are having trouble, so I'm going to assume you know nothing and try to explain.
1 - Download the flac command line encoder from Rarewares.
2 - Either place flac.exe somewhere in your Path, or if you don't know what that means just put it in your root directory (C:\)
3 - open a command line window (Start -> Run -> (key in) cmd (press enter))
4 - in the white on black window which pops up, type in (without the quotes) "cd \."  (note the period) and press enter.  This will take you to the root directory of what I assume is your C drive.  The prompt should be "C:\>"
5 - you already extracted flac.exe to this place, now use windows explorer to copy and paste one of (or all if you're bold) your malfunctioning FLAC files to the root of C.
6 - from the white on black command line window type in (without the quotes) "flac -t < suspect file name > .flac" replacing < suspect file name > with the actual name of the file.  Put the file name in quotes if it contains spaces.

Code: [Select]
 C:\>flac -t "NB2008-1 2-05D1T07.flac"

For example
Creature of habit.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #9 –
Quote
But what bothers me is that the original flac file plays perfectly on the PC. After conversion, troubles abound (foobar gives error mssgs on certain tracks "Error decoding source file (Unsupported format or corrupted file) " when doing to mp3).
  Well...  I've seen (apparently) corrupt video files that play OK, but cause trouble (sometimes crashing of other wierd probems) when you try to edit or convert them.  It mostly happens with highly-compressed video formats, and it's fairly common with video...  I don't recall ever having this problem with audio files.

Quote
I have recently had a dvd-r forwarded to me...
I've also seen quite a few bad burned DVDs (probably due to flaky/defective blanks).  You can try testing the DVD with Nero CD-DVD Speed (FREE!!!).  That will tell you if you've got a "physical" problem with the DVD (which I strongly suspect), but it won't tell you if bad data was burned onto the DVD (i.e. if the FLAC files were bad to begin with). 


Quote
....there must be a way to make a properly functioning audio cd from these flacs.
  If you can play the audio, you can always make an analog recording! (if all else fails)

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #10 –
Ok, thanks for all the feedback.

Soap, thank for writing it all out, all of that was needed for me to be able to follow. I did as indicate and i received the following mssg:

ERROR initializing decoder.

LAC_STREAM_DECODER_INIT_STATUS_ERROR_OPENING_FILE

An error occurred opening the input file; it is likely that it does not exist or is not readable.


-----

I don't know exactly what that means. I will wait for replies.


I also attempted to burn on another computer, but there are some problems on it and i could not get it to work (nero only accepted wav format for burning, and foobar didn't recognize the dvd burning drive.....i have no idea why, or how to fix those things). I did however attempt to convert the files on that computer and the same problems were encountered: foobar would stop and give an error mssg when converting.

I have tried Nero DVDCD Speed, it did nothing exceptional for me. I ran the program on default and it verified all sorts of things about the physical dvd drive and did not complain about the inserted dvd.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #11 –
Just a thought, but are the FLACs encoded 44kHz 16-bit ?

If not, you might have trouble just doing a straight burn to audio CD without temporarily converting them to such.

Some FLAC files I have downloaded from free public sites (like the live postings on Archive.ORG) are encoded 48kHz 24-bit and I have to extract them to WAV and then convert the WAV to 44kHz 16-bit before burning to audio CD.

Problematic (Possibly corrupted, although uncertain) flac files

Reply #12 –
Quote
I have recently had a dvd-r forwarded to me in the mail containing a couple compilations of audio flac files.
  I think the real solution is to have the person mail you new copies...  Perhaps WAV files this time, just in case there's something wrong with his/her FLAC encoder.  And, perhaps on CDs this time.