Why no flac in .bun, .san, .dxa?

[mcfly_inc]

Why doesn't the following have the flac option for compression?

compress_scumm_bun.exe
compress_scumm_san.exe
encode_dxa.exe
(compress_sword1.exe)

I always try to use a lossless compression when ever it's possible.

[JamesWoodcock]

Lossless compression is great, however for something that is already heavily compressed with old codecs, it is really best to use something like OGG Vorbis instead anyway, as you will never enjoy a true lossless by converting a compressed format.

If they ever re-released games with Audio CD quality sound for voices, then I would be in the FLAC camp as well

[eriktorbjorn]

Why doesn't the following have the flac option for compression?

compress_scumm_bun.exe
compress_scumm_san.exe
encode_dxa.exe
(compress_sword1.exe)

I always try to use a lossless compression when ever it's possible.

In the case of encode_dxa.exe, I guess it's because it encodes to an existing format, which does not include FLAC compression. Though one possibility would be to create a soundless DXA, and make the sound a separate file.

I don't know about the other ones, but there are cases where using FLAC compression actually produces larger files than the originals. One such example is compress_sword2.exe.

[mcfly_inc]

To glidem - For Full Throttle you can compress audio using flac, but not the video (*.san) files. That is why I think it's possible to use flac for video files also.

Broken Sword 1+2 it's not possible to use flac - I've just tried to compress the sword1 Music folder it's in .wav format, but using flac it went fron 210MB to 432MB.

My idea was to make a ScummVM DVD with all my games. Using only lossless or original files.

[clem]

That is why I think it's possible to use flac for video files also.

FLAC stands for free lossless audio codec; while it might be possible to use that on video data it wouldn't yield the same compression results as for audio. Afaik lossless compressed video files in ScummVM use a zlib-based approach

clem

[mcfly_inc]

clem - you are right that when compressing video files (.san) it uses zlib. However there is audio in almost every video file, and when compressing you have the option to use ogg or mp3. And I would also like to have the flac option.

[Kirben]

Broken Sword 1+2 it's not possible to use flac - I've just tried to compress the sword1 Music folder it's in .wav format, but using flac it went fron 210MB to 432MB.

Flac compression would offer little advantage for the speech files of Broken Sword 1 though:

SPEECH1.CLU (332MB)
SPEECH1.CLF (323MB)
SPEECH2.CLU (323MB)
SPEECH2.CLF (315MB)

Flac compression of the music/speech files of Broken Sword 2 was reported to be larger than original files too.

[mcfly_inc]

When do you release the sword1 compress tool with flac support?

Is it possible to reencode sword1+2 video files using flac?

[fingolfin]

We have no plans to release those. If you read through this thread again, we just explained why, too: Because the produced files are either *larger*, or only marginally smaller, than the original files. So the main goal of compression, namely, saving space, is not achieved. So where's the point?

[mcfly_inc]

OK Thanks, and you are right - it's all about size (& quality).
But is this only for sword1?
How about
compress_scumm_bun.exe (Dig, COMI)
compress_scumm_san.exe (Full Throttle, COMI)
Is it possible to get smaller size using flac for these files?

[fingolfin]

Nope, it isn't, the files already use an audio compression scheme, and using FLAC actually results in bigger files.