[fluid-dev] Re: Fast file renderer

[David Henningsson]

address@hidden wrote:
> Quoting David Henningsson <address@hidden>:
> > > I think it might be best to just query libsndfile for the first  
> > > supported audio format, for a given file type, if no audio format  is 
> > > specified and the default of 16 bit PCM fails.  That would solve  the 
> > > Ogg/Vorbis issue and possibly work fine with future supported  file 
> > > types which have a specific audio format.
> >
> > If that is possible, that would be even better.
>
> With sf_command you can query the available audio formats for a 
> particular file type.  If they add support for other audio formats to 
> Ogg though, that could become a problem, since you wouldn't be able to 
> specify Vorbis explicitly in that case.
>
> Another option would be to dynamically list all the available formats 
> (by querying libsndfile for their descriptions) and for formats that we 
> know of, provide a short abbreviation as we do now.  For unrecognized 
> formats, it could just list something like fmt17 (using its assigned ID 
> number).  Whenever "fmt" is encountered, whatever number follows would 
> be used verbatim as the format ID, so that any format could be specified 
> by its number (to provide backwards compatibility in future versions 
> where we add a format abbreviation).
>
> I think I might like that the best.  We could also make it to where -O 
> help would list only valid audio formats for the given file type (if 
> specified).
>
> How does that sound?

Well, it seems okay but perhaps a little overkill? :-) Also abbreviations like "fmt17" might make a 
user confused. And it is difficult to predict what kinds of formats libsndfile will implement in the 
future anyway, so perhaps we could wait and see and fix it later, if more formats arise.

I would say that all we need is that if no format is specified; we go for the first supported format 
we find (perhaps try SF_FORMAT_PCM_16 before SF_FORMAT_PCM_S8 though...).

If you feel very strongly about "fmt17" though, go ahead.

// David