freeze during flac playback on 30GB 5th gen ipod

[aalbinger]

Hi,

I own a 30gb 5th gen video ipod.  I installed the "current build" that was available today.  My main goal was to be able to directly play .flac files.

I got a bit sidetracked while playing with the various themes and setting up the database to discover my existing .mp3 data in the ipod directory structures.  Works great!

Anyway, I own several live shows in flac format.  I created a "flac" folder in the root directory of my ipod and copied 2 shows into it.  I can easily browse to this from the file browser.  When I select a track to play it comes up in the wps screen as expected but then it seems to freeze and there is no sound.  After a bit of a hang I can menu out and play with plugins and such, but I cannot get any song playback to work.  If I shutdown the ipod and then restart it I can once again play mp3 content.  

I switched to another flac formatted show and made it through the 1st 4 flac files with no issues (and they sounded great) but somewhere in the 5th file the player once again hung and required a reboot to fix.

I've looked a little bit for a FAQ or buglist but I've not magically stumbled onto the answer yet.  Is this the correct place to ask for help?

I figure this is likely either a known bug or there is potentially a flaw in my .flac files.  That being said my other flac -> mp3 conversion software and .flac players haven't had issues with these particular files.

Thanks!

-Andrew

[Taurine]

I just got an iRiver iHP-140 today, and put Rockbox on right away, primarily to be able to play FLAC. I don't already have much in FLAC format, which is lucky...

I created FLAC files in Windows using CDEX 1.70 beta 1 and got similar results to the poster. The files didn't play at all, and after that it took a reboot to get anything else to play.

I then used the FLAC creator built into Konqueror on KDE (on Linux) to rip the same tracks, and they so far appear to play just fine. I haven't done much testing but it seems FLAC playback is sensitive to the encoder. On Linux I have the most recent version, I don't know which one CDEX uses but its got to be out of date because it was released ages ago.

Can anyone confirm, is this a common problem? Are there workarounds? Or is this just a fault with recent daily builds?

[pixelma]

Could either of you check what type of tags the flac-files have that do not play?

As far as I know the standard tag type for flac is the so called "vorbis comments". I've heard that some encoders manage to put ID3s tags instead and it is also tolerated by some music players for PC. However Rockbox only plays flac files with the proper vorbis comments.

I hope this is the case because then you would only need to use a good tagging software to solve the problem...

[Taurine]

I've experimented with different tagging options in CDEX including no tags, and tried some tag editors on the results, but no FLAC files that come out of CDEX seem to work on my iHP-140. That includes files made with tags turned off and then Vorbis tags added.

Then I ran the 'file' command on some files that work and some that don't. There is a marked difference. Here's one that works:

10 - The Black Angel's Death Song.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 16 bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz, 8460144 samples

and here is one that doesn't:

10-The Black Angel's Death Song.flac: FLAC audio bitstream data, 16 bit, stereo, 44.1 kHz, length unknown

(both versions play in Audacious)

so in my case it seems something else is wrong. Whether this helps the original poster is another matter.

[Taurine]

Just for the record, after I upgraded CDEX to the latest version, 1.7 beta 2, it started producing FLACs that play just fine.