[Flac-dev] 2/0, 2/2 3/0, 3/2, 5.1, wxyz

[Josh Coalson]

--- smoerk <smoerk at gmx.de> wrote:
> Curt Sampson wrote:
> > Well, we already have the problem of being able to encode only a
> very
> > limited number of independent tracks in this field, too. Currently
> > the limit is 8, which does me no good when I want to FLAC-encode a
> > multi-track "master" from my studio, which can easily be 48 tracks
> or
> > more.
> 
> FLAC can only encode 8 tracks? Why?

here's the justification behind the 8-track limit.  the format
includes a very light container suited for the most common usage
of FLAC.  it allows up to 8 independent channels to be used.
some limit was necessary to keep the frame header simple, and
looking back, I made it too complicated with the blocksize
variants, etc.

besides independent channels, the channel assigments are supposed
to be reserved to the most common cases, and finally cases where
inter-channel decorrelation can be used in order to improve the
compression ratio, and I foresaw a limited number of these.  so
it's probably misnamed, or doing double duty, but it's not really
meant to capture all possible channel assignments in use.

more esoteric assigments, where the coding is still done
independent of channel, should probably be done with mono FLAC
streams muxed into a real container.

Josh


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