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Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +000079
80 <P>
Josh Coalson1178a142001-06-05 23:34:56 +000081 <A NAME="20010607">07-Jun-2001:</A>
82 </P>
83 <P>
84 <UL>
85 <LI>
86 <B>FLAC 0.10 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;This is probably the final beta. There have been many improvements in the last two months:
87 <UL>
88 <LI>Both the encoder and decoder have been significantly sped up. Aside from C improvements, the code base now has an assembly infrastructure that allows assembly routines for different architectures to be easily integrated. Many key routines have now have faster IA-32 implementations (thanks to Miroslav).</LI>
89 <LI>A new metadata block <A HREF="format.html#def_SEEKTABLE">SEEKTABLE</A> has been defined to hold an arbitrary number of seek points, which speeds up seeking within a stream.</LI>
Josh Coalson3e06dad2001-06-06 18:47:49 +000090 <LI><B><TT>flac</TT></B> now has a command-line usage similar to 'gzip'; make sure to see the latest <A HREF="documentation.html">documentation</A> for the new usage. It also attempts to preserve the input file's timestamp and permissions.</LI>
Josh Coalson1178a142001-06-05 23:34:56 +000091 <LI>The -# options in <B><TT>flac</TT></B> have been tweaked to yield the best compression-to-encode-time ratios. The new default is -5.</LI>
Josh Coalsona875b872001-06-06 19:34:54 +000092 <LI><B><TT>flac</TT></B> can now usually autodetect WAVE files when encoding so that -fw is usually not needed when encoding from stdin.</LI>
Josh Coalson1178a142001-06-05 23:34:56 +000093 <LI>The WAVE reader in <B><TT>flac</TT></B> now just ignores (with a warning) unsupported sub-chunks instead of aborting with an error.</LI>
Josh Coalsond2e0e0e2001-06-06 19:27:48 +000094 <LI>Added an option '--delete-input-file' to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> which automatically deletes the input after a successful encode/decode.</LI>
95 <LI>Added an option '-o' to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> to force the output file name (the old usage of "flac - outputfilename" is no longer supported).</LI>
Josh Coalson1178a142001-06-05 23:34:56 +000096 <LI>Changed the XMMS plugin to send smaller chunks of samples (now 512) so that visualization is not slow.</LI>
97 <LI>Fixed a bug in the stream decoder where the decoded samples counter got corrupted after a seek.</LI>
98 </UL>
99 It should be a short hop to 1.0.
100 </LI>
101 </UL>
102 </P>
103
104 <P>
Josh Coalsonc8c0fa72001-03-30 23:53:04 +0000105 <A NAME="20010331">31-Mar-2001:</A>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000106 </P>
107 <P>
108 <UL>
109 <LI>
Josh Coalsonc8c0fa72001-03-30 23:53:04 +0000110 <B>FLAC 0.9 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;There were some format changes that broke backwards compatibility but these should be the last (see below). Also, there have been several bug fixes and some new features:
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000111 <UL>
Josh Coalsonc8c0fa72001-03-30 23:53:04 +0000112 <LI>FLAC's sync code has been lengthened to 14 bits from 9 bits. This should enable a faster and more robust synchronization mechanism.</LI>
113 <LI>Two reserved bits were added to the frame header.</LI>
114 <LI>A CRC-16 was added to the FLAC frame footer, and the decoder now does frame integrity checking based on the CRC.</LI>
115 <LI>The format now includes a new subframe field to indicate when a subblock has one or more 0 LSBs for all samples. This increases compression on some kinds of data.</LI>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000116 <LI>Added two options to the analysis mode, one for including the residual signal in the analysis file, and one for generating gnuplot files of each subframe's residual distribution with some statistics. See the latest <A HREF="documentation.html#analysis_options">documentation</A>.</LI>
Josh Coalsonc8c0fa72001-03-30 23:53:04 +0000117 <LI>XMMS plugin now supports 8-bit files.</LI>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000118 <LI>Fixed a bug in the Winamp2 plugin where the audio sounded garbled.</LI>
119 <LI>Fixed a bug in the Winamp2 plugin where Winamp would hang sporadically at the end of a track (c.f. <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=231197&group_id=13478&atid=113478">bug #231197</A>).</LI>
120 </UL>
121 FLAC is on track for an official 1.0 release soon.
122 </LI>
123 </UL>
124 </P>
125
126 <P>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000127 <A NAME="20010305">05-Mar-2001:</A>
128 </P>
129 <P>
130 <UL>
131 <LI>
132 <B>FLAC 0.8 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;This release is a result of extensive testing and fixes several bugs encountered when pushing the encoder to the limit. I'm pretty confident in the stability of the encoder/decoder now for all kinds of input. There have also been several features added. Here is a complete list of the changes since 0.7:
133 <UL>
134 <LI>Created a new utility called <B><TT>metaflac</TT></B>. It is a metadata editor for .flac files. Right now it just lists the contents of the metadata blocks but eventually it will allow update/insertion/deletion.</LI>
Josh Coalsonc864b2d2001-03-05 20:01:22 +0000135 <LI>Added two new metadata blocks: PADDING which has an obvious function, and APPLICATION, which is meant to be open to third party applications. See the <A HREF="format.html#def_APPLICATION">latest format docs</A> for more info, or the new <A HREF="id.html">id registration page</A>.</LI>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000136 <LI>Added a <B><TT>-P</TT></B> option to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> to reserve a PADDING block when encoding.</LI>
137 <LI>Added support for 24-bit files to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> (the FLAC format always supported it).</LI>
Josh Coalsonc864b2d2001-03-05 20:01:22 +0000138 <LI>Started the Winamp3 plugin.</LI>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000139 <LI>Greatly expanded the test suite, adding more streams (24-bit streams, noise streams, non-audio streams, more patterns) and more option combinations to the encoder. The test suite runs about 30 streams and over 5000 encodings now.</LI>
140 <LI>Fixed a bug in <B><TT>libFLAC</B></TT> that happened when using an exhaustive LPC coefficient quantization search with 8 bps input.</LI>
141 <LI>Fixed a bug in <B><TT>libFLAC</B></TT> where the error estimation in the fixed predictor could overflow.</LI>
142 <LI>Fixed a bug in <B><TT>libFLAC</B></TT> where LPC was attempted even when the autocorrelation coefficients implied it wouldn't help.</LI>
143 <LI>Reworked the LPC coefficient quantizer, which also fixed another bug that might occur in rare cases.</LI>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000144 <LI>Really fixed the '-V overflow' bug (c.f. <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=13478&atid=113478&aid=231976&func=detail">bug #231976</A>).</LI>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000145 <LI>Fixed a bug in <B><TT>flac</B></TT> related to the decode buffer sizing.</LI>
146 </UL>
147 FLAC is very close to being ready for an official release. The only known problems left are with the Winamp plugins, which should be fixed soon, and pipes with MSVC.
148 </LI>
149 </UL>
150 </P>
151
Josh Coalsonbb7f6b92000-12-10 04:09:52 +0000152 <P>
Josh Coalson4bbb2022001-02-12 09:09:41 +0000153 <A NAME="20010212">12-Feb-2001:</A>
154 </P>
155 <P>
156 <UL>
157 <LI>
158 <B>FLAC 0.7 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;This is mainly a bug fix release, specifically:
159 <UL>
160 <LI>Fixed a bug that happened when both -fr and --seek were used at the same time.</LI>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000161 <LI>Fixed a bug with -p (c.f. <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=13478&atid=113478&aid=230992&func=detail">bug #230992</A>).</LI>
162 <LI>Fixed a bug that happened when using large (&gt;32K) blocksizes and -V (c.f. <A HREF="http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=13478&atid=113478&aid=231976&func=detail">bug #231976</A>).</LI>
Josh Coalson4bbb2022001-02-12 09:09:41 +0000163 <LI>Fixed a bug where encoder was double-closing a file.</LI>
164 <LI>Expanded the test suite.</LI>
165 <LI>Added more optimization flags for gcc, which should speed up flac.</LI>
166 </UL>
167 </LI>
168 </UL>
169 </P>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000170
Josh Coalson4bbb2022001-02-12 09:09:41 +0000171 <P>
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000172 <A NAME="20010128">28-Jan-2001:</A>
173 </P>
174 <P>
175 <UL>
176 <LI>
177 <B>FLAC 0.6 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;The encoder is now much faster. The -m option has been sped up by 4x and -r improved, meaning that in the default compression mode (-6), encoding should be at least 3 times faster. Other changes:
178 <UL>
179 <LI>Some bugs related to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> and pipes were fixed (see <A HREF="http://www.geocrawler.com/lists/3/SourceForge/7206/0/5013495/">here</A> for the discussion).</LI>
Josh Coalson9265d7b2001-01-28 09:49:23 +0000180 <LI>A "loose mid-side" (<TT>-M</TT>) option to the encoder has been added, which adaptively switches between independent and mid-side coding, instead of the exhaustive search that <TT>-m</TT> does.
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000181 <LI>An analyze mode (<B><TT>-a</TT></B>) has been added to <B><TT>flac</TT></B>. This is useful mainly for developers; currently it will dump info about each frame and subframe to a file. It's a text file in a format that can be easily processed by scripts; a separate analysis program is in the works.</LI>
Josh Coalsonfce38132001-01-26 22:38:46 +0000182 <LI>The source now has an autoconf/libtool-based build system. This should allow the source to build "out-of-the-box" on many more platforms.</LI>
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000183 </UL>
184 </LI>
185 </UL>
186 </P>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000187
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000188 <P>
Josh Coalsoncab3c0a2001-01-16 07:08:13 +0000189 <A NAME="20010115">15-Jan-2001:</A>
Josh Coalsonac7fa282001-01-13 01:01:41 +0000190 </P>
191 <P>
192 <UL>
193 <LI>
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000194 <B>FLAC 0.5 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;This is the first beta version of FLAC. Being beta, there will be no changes to the format that will break older streams, unless a serious bug involving the format is found. What this means is that, barring such a bug, streams created with 0.5 will be decodable by future versions. This version also includes some new features:
Josh Coalsonac7fa282001-01-13 01:01:41 +0000195 <UL>
Josh Coalsoncab3c0a2001-01-16 07:08:13 +0000196 <LI>An <A HREF="http://userpages.umbc.edu/~mabzug1/cs/md5/md5.html">MD5 signature</A> of the unencoded audio is computed during encoding, and stored in the Encoding metadata block in the stream header. When decoding, <B><TT>flac</TT></B> will now compute the MD5 signature of the decoded data and compare it against the signature in the stream header.</LI>
Josh Coalsonac7fa282001-01-13 01:01:41 +0000197 <LI>A test mode (<B><TT>-t</TT></B>) has been added to <B><TT>flac</TT></B>. It works like decode mode but doesn't write an output file.</LI>
198 </UL>
199 </LI>
200 </UL>
201 </P>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000202
Josh Coalsonac7fa282001-01-13 01:01:41 +0000203 <P>
Josh Coalsone9327082000-12-22 22:43:32 +0000204 <A NAME="20001223">23-Dec-2000:</A>
205 </P>
206 <P>
207 <UL>
Josh Coalson1186da82001-01-26 22:00:19 +0000208 <LI><B>FLAC 0.4 released.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;This version fixes a bug in the constant subframe detection. More importantly, a verify option (-V) has been added to <B><TT>flac</TT></B> that verifies the encoding process. With this option turned on, <B><TT>flac</TT></B> will create a parallel decoder while encoding to make sure that the encoded output decodes to exactly match the original input. In this way, any unknown bug in the encoder will be caught and <B><TT>flac</TT></B> will abort with an error message.</LI>
Josh Coalsone9327082000-12-22 22:43:32 +0000209 </UL>
210 </P>
Josh Coalsonf12ac352001-03-02 21:20:01 +0000211
Josh Coalsone9327082000-12-22 22:43:32 +0000212 <P>
213 <A NAME="20001210">10-Dec-2000:</A>
Josh Coalsonbb7f6b92000-12-10 04:09:52 +0000214 </P>
215 <P>
216 <UL>
Josh Coalsonb9366e92001-03-22 23:34:20 +0000217 <LI><B>FLAC debuts on SourceForge.</B>&nbsp;&nbsp;The FLAC project is now being hosted on SourceForge. Visit the <A HREF="http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/flac/">FLAC project page</A> to join the mailing list or sign up as a developer.</LI>
Josh Coalsonbb7f6b92000-12-10 04:09:52 +0000218 </UL>
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Josh Coalson276ad892001-06-10 20:58:08 +0000230<P>&nbsp;Copyright (c) 2000,2001 Josh Coalson</P>
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