Media player advice r.e flac

[ribbons69]

Hello all,I'm reasonably adept now at the whole megaupload thing with mp3's but I still struggle to make sense of the "convert flac to mp3" thread.
My pc got seriously virused up a couple of months ago,and when it came back from the shop having been fixed they had put vlc media player on it,as well as the standard windows media player.Now wmp gets a lot of stick,but I like it,and it's dead easy to use,but it won't play flac files.However vlc will,but it seems bloody awkward to use,at the moment,having downloaded the Leamington Spa gig,I have to go into my "my music" folder,find the file,then right click and select "play with vlc" Is there an easier way?
Also,I saw a mention when I was researching this last night of foobar2000,is it worth downloading,as it appears to support flac.and the screenshots look similiar to wmp?
Any advice would be appreciated,thank you.

[Izzy HaveMercy]

http://www.freerip.com/features.php

The basic version is free and rips anything from cd, but also converts to the types mentioned. Including FLAC.

IZ.

[Pista]

I'd kick wmp into touch, unless you download a bunch of codecs to enable it to plat FLACs. It will play them but it's a pain in the arris.

VLC is good, but seems incapable of gapless playback & that is fecking irritating when listening to a show.

I'd opt for winamp tbh.
You can get add ons that enable it to play just about anything you chuck at it (even apple lossless).

Of course you could always just convert the files with Trader's Little Helper or flac frontend.

[DocSommer]

I use Winamp for audio playback and TLH for conversion tasks (if needed)

[originalgoth]

However vlc will,but it seems bloody awkward to use,at the moment,having downloaded the Leamington Spa gig,I have to go into my "my music" folder,find the file,then right click and select "play with vlc" Is there an easier way?

Any advice would be appreciated,thank you.

When you do the above bit - Right click etc. go down to the "Choose Program" option, select VLC and then at the bottom of that small window there's a check box that says "Always use the selected program to open this kind of file".
Click on the check box and click OK and you shouldn't have to keep doing it for FLACs in future.

[LouLou]

i mostly use vlc for playback and it seems to do the job just fine.

but when i want to convert FLAC files to mp3 i first convert them into wav with winamp, then convert the wav's to mp3 with itunes because i can't be arsed with those conversion gizmos (which, i suspect, would take a lot less time )

[originalgoth]

I find Switch audio file converter to be quite useful - converts from FLAC, wav, MP3 to lots of other formats and is so easy to use.
It's free to non commercial users.

Click on the "Download Switch......" on this link.
http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html

[Mothra]

I found this page really helpful. http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/08/14/ho ... g-windows/

Might not tell you anything that you don't already know, but I also struggled to follow other instructions. Ultimately, I find the whole FLAC conversation process a big enough pain in the arse that unless its something I really wanna hear, I don't tend to bother downloading them now.

[Quiff Boy]

wow, i can't believe it's so difficult.

it's so easy to batch convert a pile of flacs into any other format (wav, aiff, mp3, ogg, whatever) using xact on a mac.

there must be a point & click equivalent app for pc

i'm not saying that in a mac v pc way, but there really must. it's becoming an increasingly common file format that i cant believe no one has made a decent, simple windows app that can do it

unless you're all just not trying hard enough with what's out there

[markfiend]

Linux it's even easier:

Code: Select all

for f in *.flac ; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -acodec mp3 -ab 192k  "$(basename $f .flac).mp3" ; done

[DocSommer]

there must be a point & click equivalent app for pc Wierded Out

Traders little Helper

[originalgoth]

While looking inthe Weeding section last night, I came across this weed..
http://www.myheartland.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=20641

When you click on the sample track link it wants you to download VLC Media Player, so I did that - it's actually a nifty bit of kit.

Plays everything including FLAC. You can play around with the graphic equeliser.

It also plays video files & lets you play around with them as well, adjust sync, flip by 90 degrees (handy if you're laying down) and a few other nifty things as well.

Might be worth a look Ribbons


PS
The sample track (Train) sounds amazing - I just wish I had a CD burner so I could get back into the weeding section.

[Pista]

While looking inthe Weeding section last night, I came across this weed..
http://www.myheartland.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=20641

When you click on the sample track link it wants you to download VLC Media Player, so I did that - it's actually a nifty bit of kit.

Plays everything including FLAC. You can play around with the graphic equeliser.

It also plays video files & lets you play around with them as well, adjust sync, flip by 90 degrees (handy if you're laying down) and a few other nifty things as well.

Might be worth a look Ribbons


PS
The sample track (Train) sounds amazing - I just wish I had a CD burner so I could get back into the weeding section.

Only thing that lets it down is the lack of gapless playback support. Otherwise it's brilliant.

[ribbons69]

While looking inthe Weeding section last night, I came across this weed..
http://www.myheartland.co.uk/viewtopic.php?t=20641

When you click on the sample track link it wants you to download VLC Media Player, so I did that - it's actually a nifty bit of kit.

Plays everything including FLAC. You can play around with the graphic equeliser.

It also plays video files & lets you play around with them as well, adjust sync, flip by 90 degrees (handy if you're laying down) and a few other nifty things as well.

Might be worth a look Ribbons


PS
The sample track (Train) sounds amazing - I just wish I had a CD burner so I could get back into the weeding section.

As I mention above somewhere,my pc came back from a repair job with vlc attached,and it does play the flac quite well.I don't find it nearly as "user friendly" as wmp though,but that may well just be lack of familiarity with it.

[originalgoth]

As I mention above somewhere,my pc came back from a repair job with vlc attached,and it does play the flac quite well.I don't find it nearly as "user friendly" as wmp though,but that may well just be lack of familiarity with it.

Sorry david,
I did see that in your post when you first posted it but forgot it as the time went by.

I only downloaded it so that I could hear the sample of the Royal Albert hall weed. I've only used it a couple of times since last night and like Pista said, it doesn't play seemlessly.

I haven't tried the video player part of it yet so will give that a go and see how it performs.

[James Blast]

VLC is actually a very powerful wee program, I'd dig further into their Help files or check some forums, it doesn't just decode, it encodes, and in many formats. xACT is my preferred weapon of choice but as the Boss said this is not the place for a Mac (full of WIN!) vs. peecee (full of FAIL!) discussion.

[markfiend]

Linux it's even easier:

Code: Select all

for f in *.flac ; do ffmpeg -i "$f" -acodec mp3 -ab 192k  "$(basename $f .flac).mp3" ; done

ffmpeg has broken. Saying mp3 isn't a supported audio codec WTF?

Still, there are other ways to do it... VLC as my brother Blast says above, for one.