FLAC CD Ripping Guide?

[brigmaticlaw]

Hi everyone! I have finally jumped into the media server rabbit hole with the aim of starting my media library completely from scratch and have a few questions about getting FLAC files to play.

Thus far I have managed to get Jellyfin up and running in my TrueNAS instance. I am able to log in through Firefox and the Windows client. The issue I'm running into is getting FLAC music files to play in any client. I keep getting the unrecognized file format error.

To get the new library started I am ripping a bunch of my CDs to FLAC using Exact Audio Copy. For my test CDs I was using the metadata functions built into EAC to pull album art and other metadata. I know the issue is specifically with the FLAC versions of the files because I am able to play the WAV versions with no problem. I'm hoping to only use FLAC because I'm crazy and have a modded iPod and would like to keep file size reasonable. I saw the support article about making sure I was using ID3v2.4 tags, which I made sure of, but I'm still running into problems.

Does anyone know of a guide like the one from Perseverant, "From Disc to Drive", but specifically for audio/music? Or does anyone have recommended settings for EAC to ensure the best compatibility with Jellyfin? Or even a better CD ripping program to use instead? 

I'm thankfully just starting out with this project and would like to get the rips done correctly from the start before the library gets too big for me to want to fix it in post. I've searched around the forum and greater internet and haven't found anything quite specific enough.

Thanks all for your help.

[TheDreadPirate]

What container are the FLACs in? All of my FLAC music is in a .flac container and plays on every client without transcoding.

Can you share your jellyfin logs via pastebin?

[brigmaticlaw]

That's a great question. It appears they're in a .flac container but I'm not 100%. Still learning the EAC interface. The log below is after attempting to play one of the FLAC versions of a song.


Hopefully this is the format you're looking for!
https://pastebin.com/WHUzdetg

[TheDreadPirate]

I am seeing mixed things about Firefox having issues if the flac file's header is formatted a certain way.

Can you try a different browser?  The log indicates it is just sending the flac song directly to the client, unmodified.

If you are running 10.10, you can also try forcing remuxes of flac files.

Click on your profile in the top left then "Playback" (not the one in dashboard).  Then scroll down to the bottom and check remuxing of flac files.

   

[brigmaticlaw]

Forgot to mention, I was getting the same error using the Windows client as well. I can update and give 10.10 a try later today when I get home.

[TheDreadPirate]

Always backup your jellyfin server data before upgrading.

[brigmaticlaw]

Just gave the force remux a shot and still no dice. Now I get a fatal player error in FF.

ffmpeg log https://pastebin.com/KnmRhC6g
Latest system log https://pastebin.com/pAmWHRBF

edit: I should also mention in the library, the WAV versions all have time stamps but the FLAC versions do not.

Could this be due to the way I configured the naming scheme for the FLAC rips? The titles of the WAV versions are not in the same format as the FLACs.

[TheDreadPirate]

No idea. It has been a long time since I used EAC. But I recall it was a bit finicky to get it to output to FLAC properly. Double check your configs in EAC.

Something isn't right about the files, clearly.

[brigmaticlaw]

You convinced me to just try it through MusicBee instead, just for fun. Definitely seems I had some wonky EAC config because this MusicBee rip worked great and I'm able to get it to play as FLAC in Firefox now. Thank you for the help!

[TheDreadPirate]

If you have a desktop running Linux, I use the command line tool "ABCDE" (A Better CD Encder). Does metadata lookups, file naming, etc.