Feature Request: FLAC Support

A few years ago we decided to transcode our music archive to FLAC to save space. It would be great to support this losless open source codec. Not saying that Resolve should support all the niche codecs out there, but FLAC is widely used to my knowledge.

Not in the video world, where we have such massive amounts of data for the moving image that nobody cares to transcode audio from PCM.

It's not that widely adopted in the music industry either, mostly within a small niche. Audiophile music services that do provide lossless FLAC downloads, do so alongside ALAC (which is open source, and cross platform, supports higher samples rates, with the complete source available on GitHub).

That said, it may be worthwhile if Resolve supported at least one lossless codec in audio-only exports.

It's pretty much WAV or AIFF. I've never heard anyone using FLAC in post.

Not in the video world, where we have such massive amounts of data for the moving image that nobody cares to transcode audio from PCM.

+ 1

It's pretty much WAV or AIFF. I've never heard anyone using FLAC in post.

+ 1

In this very field of "feature requests" for Resolve, I think that at least 40 ones would be more relevant than supporting FLAC.
Even in the field of audio, nowadays we have To of HD, what's the point of wasting time in re-encodings to save half the file size only ? I'd prefer keeping AIFF then...

This one doesn't seem to get allot of votes .

In case anybody is facing this problem; on macOS and Linux there is a solution that mounts a filesystem that exposes FLAC files as Wav files in realtime. Unfortunatly, it is unexistant for windows.

Here are the links!

Linux:
http://www.mcternan.me.uk/aifffffs/

macOS:
https://twistedwave.com/TwistedFLAC.html

This one doesn't seem to get allot of votes .

No indeed, but you took risks in a post-prod. forum

In case anybody is facing this problem; on macOS and Linux there is a solution that mounts a filesystem that exposes FLAC files as Wav files in realtime. Unfortunatly, it is unexistant for windows.
macOS:
https://twistedwave.com/TwistedFLAC.html

Whaouu... A bit old but probably useful for some.
Note that you should install MacFuse prior to it, which is old-fashioned too.
Honestly, there are lots of utilities* to turn FLAC into wav/aiff if needed, I'd never let files in FLAC so I personally decode/encode in final format as soon as received.
*just me alone, I have Any FLAC Converter, Fission, SoundConverter and xACT waiting to have a job at least
THX for the piece of news anyway

No indeed, but you took risks in a post-prod. forum

Sure, everybody's opinion is greatly appreciated!

When working on live music performance Blu-ray releases or Broadcast streams (still very much in the realm of "post-production"), certain producers request ALAC Lossless audio-only versions (which natively play back as opposed to FLAC) to side load on to their iPhones or iPads for approval.

Storage capacity is still an issue for many.

One less step to provide QC audio-only deliverables would be useful in my book.

I'd love to get this functionality as well. The arguments against are well made, but the fact remains that my whole library is FLAC, and not having to convert would be helpful.

Given the addition of Fairlight to the program, it seems even more 'appropriate' that audio format support widens.

You can't embed SMPTE timecode into FLAC files (or Apple Lossless), so neither file is great for post. Only Broadcast WAV files with embedded timecode really work well -- the advantage of having them timecoded is that they'll be absolutely frame-accurate in terms of sync and editing.

When I have to deal with FLAC or Lossless files, I just convert them to Broadcast WAV files and get on with life.

The strongest argument against such audio formats, IMHO!

When I have to deal with FLAC or Lossless files, I just convert them to Broadcast WAV files and get on with life.

+ 1. That's what I wrote too, and I think the % of actions like this in post is near 100

Given the addition of Fairlight to the program, it seems even more 'appropriate' that audio format support widens.

Agreed. A DAW should be able to handle at least a few audio formats & codecs.

But this DAW is used in tight integration with moving images and having the option of TC for external input seems essential to me.

But this DAW is used in tight integration with moving images and having the option of TC for external input seems essential to me.

Marc's comment in another thread is perhaps pertinent.

One of the Fairlight demo people told me at NAB in April, "we fully anticipate there will be sound engineers who will buy Resolve just for the Fairlight capabilities and never touch the Color page." So in effect, the program we have now is that separate program. Just pretend the Color page is not there. Heck, you might be able to ignore the Edit page, too.

emphasis mine.

i don't think we wouldn't have to discuss the benefits and drawbacks of just this one particular audio codec, if we were able to simply extend the file format support capabilities of our beloved video processing software ourself.

and that's not just illusionary dream! you will will find exactly this possibility in other (very respectable and expensive) professional software out of the box. i don't want to provoke anyone here by calling the name of this competing products[s], but they simply exist, and they demonstrate very well, how this kind of vast file format support and modular expandability can realized by just utilizing a very common ffmpeg-based interface -- even in a commercial closed source product for productions of highest demands.

at the end it should be up to the user, which audio format he prefers and use!

You can't embed SMPTE timecode into FLAC files

Don't need it. It's a music and SFX library I'm dealing with.

it should be up to the user, which audio format he prefers and use!

That's really the best argument for supporting FLAC. I mean hell, even .mp3 is now supported.

It's pretty much WAV or AIFF. I've never heard anyone using FLAC in post.

When working on live music performance Blu-ray releases or Broadcast streams (still very much in the realm of "post-production"), certain producers request ALAC Lossless audio-only versions (which natively play back as opposed to FLAC) to side load on to their iPhones or iPads for approval.

Storage capacity is still an issue for many.

One less step to provide QC audio-only deliverables would be useful in my book.

You can't embed SMPTE timecode into FLAC files (or Apple Lossless), so neither file is great for post. Only Broadcast WAV files with embedded timecode really work well -- the advantage of having them timecoded is that they'll be absolutely frame-accurate in terms of sync and editing.

When I have to deal with FLAC or Lossless files, I just convert them to Broadcast WAV files and get on with life.

When I have to deal with FLAC or Lossless files, I just convert them to Broadcast WAV files and get on with life.

+ 1. That's what I wrote too, and I think the % of actions like this in post is near 100

+100

HuM hum . The FLAC is a format I use to encode my audios on a 16GB USB key to listen to music in my car (seriously). This is a good format but FLAC has nothing to do with software such as Davinci Resolve. HMO.

HeY guys,

Whaooo, this thread's still alive ? I'm surprised, really...
Please note then that my point of view has nothing to do with a particular preference or any personal worship : I just really distinguish what are my private personal life habits from the pro world of post I've been daily experiencing too for years and years.

Therefore for me in a iPod, my car or in a music library at home, yes of course, FLAC is ok (though in case of a lossless format, I prefer the WAV file which is twice only as big as FLAC). But this is me, I don't reckon anything.

Now, in post, I'm dealing with more serious projects, I cannot afford to reach a point where I might say "hell, why did I keep this format ?". Standards WAV or AIFF are enough and I have no need to add some in this very field. Morevover, even with amateur tools, FLAC can be transcoded so quickly that it's not a pain to batch some and waste a minute to be finished with them for the whole project.

It somehow sounds like around the beginnings of the video on the web : you had dl files, streamed files, embedded files and stuff like .mpeg, .asf, .avi, .wmv, .mov, .rm, and at least 5 more; then .flv, .mp4 etc with vp8, h264, mpeg4 sp, theora, vp9, ...
Then ok, mp4 with H264 is the standard for industry, no need to encode in 10 formats now, at least for the web, VOD and BDs.
And this is the same : for personal use, no problem but for work, if something's ok, no need to add anything with no benefit at the end (a bit room on HDs).

Even if FLAC is lossless and then provides quality for consumers, to me, asking for it in post almost sounds like asking for vorbis too : irrelevant and useless*
*(for post hmm)

Consequently, I'd really like BMDs keeps on focusing efforts on really useful tools as they've been doing up to now.

Even if FLAC is lossless and then provides quality for consumers, to me, asking for it in post almost sounds like asking for vorbis too : irrelevant and useless*
*(for post hmm)

Consequently, I'd really like BMDs keeps on focusing efforts on really useful tools as they've been doing up to now.

Given the discussion rate in this topic proves there is disagreement on the subject. There are more urgent matters to address, I fully agree. But let's not hold back on evolution. What if they stopped researching alternative energy sources in the car industry? We would've stopped at Gasoline and said: "OK, this is good enough. It makes my car run fast enough even though consumption and exhaustion rate is very high.". We need to go forward, not stand still at old habbits and ways of doing things. If we can save half of the disc space for our music and sfx library, we should! If there was a way to decrease our carbon footprint by half, we should! For the record, I'm not directly comparing carbon footprint to disk space usage. My feature request is not one that has to be implemented right now, heck, maybe not even for FLAC. But there are more efficient ways to store audio now than WAV and AIFF. Disk space might not matter to all, but it still does to some of us.

It's also very true that audio and video codecs come and go. Some might stay a while, some might go quickly (Vorbis indeed). I agree that maybe it's not up to BMD to maintain support for all of these formats/codecs and focus on Resolve itself. Maybe BMD could grace us with the gift of an I/O SDK so that the community can write what they need. There is a thread on this forum about the community wanting to translate Resolve into different languages, even for free! I strongly believe in the community and sharing. We do this with tips and tricks every day here. Why not let the tech savvy ones among us create and share tools we could all use. I would be happy to chip in!

Nick, I believe in differences, ideas and suggestions too, I believe in the community too, I'm part of those you read they were ready to translate (you can check) and mainly agree with smart participation too, but the topic was not about opening Resolve with giving an SDK to add features (in this case of course, feel free to write the flac plug-in you need), it was about a direct request to BMD.
My opinion is just about the hierarchy of importance of requests contents: if it would fix a huge lack and/or something preventing a smart and quick workflow, or at least something requested by thousands and thousands of users, I wouldn't write here.
So far, I feel it's a good format for consumers music libraries, but co-workers in post will probably survive without it in Resolve.
Not more, not less.

but the topic was not about opening Resolve with giving an SDK to add features (in this case of course, feel free to write the flac plug-in you need), it was about a direct request to BMD.

Hi Sam, that's absolutely true. My mistake! I'll start a new thread for an I/O Plugin SDK!

Thank you all for your input, at first I was not thinking of an I/O Plugin SDK and this thread made me think it's the right way to go

For anyone who is interested, here is the new thread in the Software Development forum.
viewtopic.php?f=12&t=63986

It's also very true that audio and video codecs come and go. Some might stay a while, some might go quickly (Vorbis indeed).

Ogg Vorbis is pretty common within the gaming industry. Often parallel Ogg Vorbis, and WAV batch exports are created within Reaper by sound designers for this purpose.

iZotope RX also supports Ogg Vorbis import and export by request from game audio engineers.

[Peter Chamberlain]

Nick, I moved the thread to the Resolve forum as a: that's where I look and b: the software dev forum is for companies that have support questions for existing BMD OEM products.

Thank you, Peter.

This is a good format but FLAC has nothing to do with software such as Davinci Resolve.

Yeah, we know that. We're asking to change that. It's a viable format for library storage. It works in many DAW's. It'd be nice to have it work in Resolve, which now includes the Fairlight DAW.

@Jim,

In my humble opinion, FLAC is not so bad but honestly, to win 50% compared to a WAV: (it is only me), I think for now that there is still much to do in Fairlight (i think). Wav presents the interest that it is much standardized. FLAC?

Now if BMD wants to focus on this format: it is up to them to make the decision: we agree.

Supported at least for decoding now as of 15b1

• Support for decoding FLAC audio files

Wow I just had to take in the release notes. Everything I could have wished for is fixed, added or updated. This is really top notch work, and am really excited! BMD does it again, year after year. They even confirmed a new pocket camera, and by the looks of it fixed every problem the first one had. The company never cease to amaze me.
Thank you BMD and a wonderful supporting forum and community for making this all happen.

My soundfx library holds 1M files (3TB). the most part of it is encoded in flac.
I tried adding in to the Resolve sound library today, unfortunately only wav were indexed.
Is there any chance for flac compatibility to be integrated into resolve soundlibrary scanning/indexing one day ?

I guess this is a bug in the current beta. Lets hope they fix it soon!

Don't need it. It's a music and SFX library I'm dealing with.

You're on a post-production forum discussing DaVinci Resolve. The software inherently does use timecode.

BTW, I have 12TB of sound effects in my library, all Broadcast WAV files, with embedded timecode. I have another 8TB of production music, same deal. When we have to use any new music for a project, I bring it into Pro Tools and spit it back out with embedded timecode, or I take a WAV file and add timecode with Sound Devices WAV Agent (which is free). To me, this is very basic Post 101, a very standard thing you do for any TV or film project. The advantage of using WAV files that it has native support with sub-frame jogging... which is a lot more work with FLAC or ALAC.

For music-only applications: I just read an interesting interview with noted Grammy engineer Bruce Swedien, and he talked about one of the most important parts of his process recording Thriller with Michael Jackson was striping dozens of tapes with timecode, so he could effectively create a hundred or more "virtual" tracks for each song. And this was back in 1983. I was using timecode in commercial production in 1979, and we just accepted it as the "sprocket holes" on which the entire project ran. Drives are cheap. In a world when 8TB drives are $150, storing 48kHz WAV files ain't gonna kill you.

In a world when 8TB drives are $150, storing 48kHz WAV files ain't gonna kill you.

Didn't you overlooked the cost of converting 20.000 hours of stereo flac to bwf in your consideration...
I'm having difficulties finding a tool that would allow me to batch convert my entire library unattended directly from flac to bwf

I'm having difficulties finding a tool that would allow me to batch convert my entire library unattended directly from flac to bwf

Get a command window and execute a .bat file that looks like this:

@echo off
call :subroutine
goto :eof

:subroutine
for %%f in (*.flac) do convert_to_wave %%f
for /D %%d in (*) do (
cd %%d
call :subroutine
cd ..
)
exit /b


Replace 'convert_to_wave' with your preferred program that converts a single flac to a wave for instance SoX.

Didn't you overlooked the cost of converting 20.000 hours of stereo flac to bwf in your consideration... I'm having difficulties finding a tool that would allow me to batch convert my entire library unattended directly from flac to bwf

It can be done. Soundminer (and many other SFX library systems) provide tools that will automatically batch-convert large quantities of AIFF or MP3 or FLAC or ALAC files to BWF. I think you wind up with timecode 00:00:00:00, but Sound Devices' Wave Agent would let you batch-change thousands of files (and for free). SoundGrinder (Mac-only) also has a batch conversion mode, as does dBPowerAmp (Mac & Windows).

My advice would be to do large chunks of the library at a time but not try to do the whole thing. Start it on a Friday afternoon and let it churn all weekend, and by Monday, I bet it could easily process 10,000+ files. (I think there are well over 150,000 files on some of those drives, maybe a million on the SFX, since many are very short.)

Full disclosure: I made a strategic mistake with my own SFX files since they all came initially from CD, in the mid-1990s, so they're all still at 44.1kHz. Had I been thinking, I would have converted them to 48kHz, because pretty much everything in pro audio is 48K. Now, every time I bring one of these into Pro Tools, I have to wait for the files to convert to this sampling frequency. Converting them all is on a long list of "to do" items I haven't yet done.

Full disclosure: I made a strategic mistake with my own SFX files since they all came initially from CD, in the mid-1990s, so they're all still at 44.1kHz.

that's indeed a very annoying issue, because resampling is always a rather questionable workaround.

but in general i would suggest sox as one of the most powerful little tools for this kind of conversions. it's an equal counterpart to ffmpeg in the audio world.

a very standard thing you do for any TV or film project.

I don't work on TV or Film projects. Mine are far less demanding. I just don't need timecode in my music files.

What exactly is the point of adding bogus timecode metadata to WAV files? Resolve interprets a file without timecodes as having a 00:00:00:00 starting timecode anyway, plus it normalises it to your project frame rate, which is way more useful than having all your files standardised to a specific timecode format like 24 frame drop frame when you might also want to work on 25fps PAL or 30fps web projects.

Don't use standards because it seems like "the right thing to do". Think about your actual requirements and whether or not a certain workflow is well suited to them. THINK. Don't blindly go and convert your entire sound library just because someone on the internet said so.

Don't blindly go and convert your entire sound library just because someone on the internet said so.

My intend at this point is simply to get my sxf library indexed by resolve.
flac support would be a great relief.

I say let Fairlight do all the work.

Why load audio into other software to convert it or add timecode. If a file format is not natively supported on the timeline then Fairlight should give the option to import and convert it like other DAWs can do. The point of Davinci Resole is or should be so you don't need to open other software to get the job finished

What exactly is the point of adding bogus timecode metadata to WAV files? Resolve interprets a file without timecodes as having a 00:00:00:00 starting timecode anyway, plus it normalises it to your project frame rate....

Yeah, I know. I've been using DAWs for nearly 25 years, which is about as long as they've been around. (1993 for me.) I'm just saying you COULD do it -- not that you should. My point is that FLAC is not standard for Pro Tools or any professional DAW of which I'm aware, and it will jog unpredictably and erratically if you try to use any compressed format (even a lossless compressed format). WAVs are fine. And there are simple methods to batch-convert many thousands of files to other formats. I think there was a point in the 1990s where we were using Sound Designer II files (one file for Left and one for Right), and I can recall having to devote half a week to straightening that out and converting them to stereo polyphonic WAVs. There was a time when Pro Tools natively dealt with SDII files, but that ended in the early 2000s since SDII files had issues on Windows. But the conversion was simple and easy, and (much to my surprise) the new files even retained the Soundminer metadata. Life goes on.

As I often say: one issue with asking questions on online forums is sometimes you're going to get answers you don't expect, or even answers you don't like. It doesn't necessarily make the answers wrong -- these are opinions here. I'm just saying that I don't know a single post house in LA that uses FLAC (and that includes Sony Pictures, which has a library almost beyond belief, as well as Skywalker Sound in Nicasio). They just get bigger drives. If you had the entire (say) Sound Ideas library on a single drive, I bet it wouldn't total over 20TB, and that's tinkertoys to deal with nowadays. The hard part is the indexing, and that does take effort and management.

One of the driving forces behind the rapid move away from ProTools among Sound Designers, for example, is due to it being the worst performing in terms of audio format support (it's video format support is even more pitiful), and just general performance in more modern workflows - hence in certain sectors the move to finding alternative solutions.

The embracing of Reaper (especially among the Game Sound Designers, and Film Sound Design specialists such as David Farmer who incidentally uses FLAC a lot) stems partly from the fact that practically any format you throw in to the application will load and play back in real time with no performance degradation and no format conversion - be that compressed, lossy, or a combination of formats - all within the same session.

One of the major advantages of Resolve, over practically every other competing audio workstation (except Reaper of course), is the fact that transcoding source media is not really part of the workflow and almost completely unnecessary.

On OS X, at least, drag-drop almost any audio format on to a Resolve Timeline and it will play back with no performance degradation - none.

The idea that jogging these formats is erratic and unpredictable has not been my experience within Resolve nor Reaper for that matter.

Some Resolve Projects have multiple formats living side-by-side across a multitude of audio tracks, without issue - that's everything from WAV, to FLAC, Apple Lossless, AAC, and even MP3 - and at different rates, anything from 384kHz to 44.1kHz.

Timeline.png (116.13 KiB) Viewed 62269 times

[FLAC] will jog unpredictably and erratically

I'm not seeing that in 15b5. It jogs every bit as well as a .wav file. Same in Audition 11.1.1.3.

I'm not seeing that in 15b5. It jogs every bit as well as a .wav file. Same in Audition 11.1.1.3.

Case closed then. Blackmagic delivers again. On to the next feature!

One of the driving forces behind the rapid move away from ProTools among Sound Designers, for example, is due to it being the worst performing in terms of audio format support (it's video format support is even more pitiful), and just general performance in more modern workflows - hence in certain sectors the move to finding alternative solutions.

Not in LA. I suspect my life experience is different than yours. I have no problem with that -- it would be a boring world if everybody worked exactly the same way. LA is fairly Pro Tools-centric in the audio post industry for Film & TV, and that includes commercials, industrial projects, trailers, cartoons, everything. Some related industries, like radio commercials, video games, or internet producers, use other tools. Anything can work, but there are good reasons to use Pro Tools if you're part of a team in LA, NY, Chicago, Miami, Atlanta, London, Paris, Melbourne, or any other production center.

No question this is changing, but I would bet every single network TV series on the air and every Hollywood studio motion picture you see and hear was edited and mixed completely or partly in Pro Tools. It's not necessarily right or wrong, but it is true. Music is different, and people use anything from Nuendo to Cubase to Sound Forge to Logic to even Garage Band. It all can work to a point. Ditto with audio mastering, which can get very specialized (and even use some analog processing).

One issue is that if you expect to work with or work for the major post studios, you're not going to get very far without a Pro Tools-compatible session. Fairlight has made some inroads there, and I know a few studios in LA that have used Fairlight for years. It's possible that could be the big "Pro Tools killer" people have been waiting for.

But when it comes to audio performance, let me know how well the program does with (say) 400-500 tracks in a complex session. There's a point where you want to avoid giving the CPU more work than it needs to do, and if the tracks come in already prepped, uncompressed, and ready to go, then it's that much less work the hardware has to do. I have worked on small projects where we still wound up with over 80 tracks, to the point where we had to strap multiple Pro Tools rigs together in order to do the final mix. Talk to the pro re-recording mixers over on the Gearslutz.com discussion group and see what they say about bringing in FLAC files to a final mixing session.

Talk to the pro re-recording mixers over on the Gearslutz.com discussion group and see what they say about bringing in FLAC files to a final mixing session.

That's a very brief discussion seeing as ProTools can't open FLAC files.

Resolve 15 already supports FLAC on the Timeline, users are requesting FLAC support within the Sound Library.

Both SoundMiner and Basehead (the two most commonly used Sound Effects Management tools) natively support FLAC - both will spot FLAC files to a Reaper Track.

As previously mentioned, David Farmer uses a lot of FLAC-based source material (with over 600 SFX DAT tapes converted to the format) and uses Reaper heavily since ProTools doesn't support that format - and he cut a lot of sound effects for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, Avengers Infinity Wars and Thor: Ragnarok within Reaper.

That could just as easily be achieved within Resolve 15.

let me know how well the program does with (say) 400-500 tracks in a complex session.

I'll never have that many in my projects.

You seem to be arguing from an "industry" viewpoint. We're not trying to get the industry to change anything. We're just some one man shops that want our NLE to support the sound format our music is in.

And it now does. Problem solved.

Thank you Resolve dev team, the Sound Library now includes support for FLAC, Apple Lossless, AIFF, and mp3 in beta 6.

Welcome addition for Sound Design workflows.