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Creating the FLAC soundtrack for the "Sintel" release

Update #10 · May 15, 2012 · comment

This is a reprint of part of an article I wrote in Free Software Magazine a little over a year ago, when I was working on the "0.1" prototype for Lib-Ray, which was a high-definition version of the Blender Open Movie "Sintel".

The part I am reprinting is work that will actually be used for the "Sintel" program on the "Blender Open Movies Collection" Lib-Ray that I am producing for this Kickstart (of course, I'll be repeating the same steps for the other Blender movies and following a similar process for "Sita Sings the Blues").

The article refers to  the "Ogg" stream format, which was the video container format I was using at the time. Of course, this will now be in a "Matroska" ("MKV") container. I've omitted the parts of the article that deal specifically with putting the sound in a container -- and an upcoming update will explain how it's done with Matroska.

Of course, it's also relevant that this is an example of my previous tutorial writing. The book I'm producing for this Kickstart will have tutorials for all of these steps -- updated to the Lib-Ray 1.0 standard, of course.

Assembling Ogg Soundtracks for an Ogg Video with Audacity, VLC, and Command Line Tools

Originally published in Free Software Magazine: http://fsmsh.com/3537

Mon, 2011-04-18 00:10 -- Terry Hancock

Ogg Vorbis and Ogg FLAC (the Ogg stream version of the Free Lossless Audio Codec) are popular free-licensed and patent-free codecs for handling sound. These are the formats I'll be using in a complex Ogg Theora video file that I am creating as part of my "Lib-Ray" experiment in creating an alternative format for distributing high definition video. In order to do this, I'll need to solve several technical challenges using the FLAC command line tools, Audacity, and VLC, which I'll demonstrate here.


I recently started working on an alternative way to package HD video for distribution -- a need I suggested in my recent piece on the Blu-Ray Blues. I decided to use the Blender Foundation's Open Movie, "Sintel" as a prototype for this, because all of the necessary files are available.

Audio

The audio for this project is in two formats: FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codex) and Vorbis (which uses lossy compression and is much smaller). I use the higher-fidelity FLAC tracks to provide the main 5.1 surround and stereo tracks, as well as the "music and effects only" track (which could be used as the basis for a new dub version).

However, the FLAC files for the 5.1 surround soundtrack are separate, and I need to have a single multi-channel FLAC file in order to combine it properly with my Theora video for playback.

For awhile, I was stumped, but I recently discovered that Audacity, as of version 1.3.3 (I am using 1.3.12), can export data to multi-channel formats

Tricky. FLAC doesn't have a huge collection of command line tools and neither flac nor metaflac can do anything like this. For awhile, I was stumped, but I recently discovered that Audacity, as of version 1.3.3 (I am using 1.3.12), can export data to multi-channel formats. Well, that certainly made things easier.

Here's how to do it.

Get the Soundtrack FLAC files

First I get the source files from the Blender Foundation's Durian project. These are available for download from a Xiph.org download server. The file I want is sintel-master-51-flac.zip, which is a zip file containing the five separate channels of the soundtrack in separate single-channel FLAC files.

While I'm at it, I'll also get the original "Stereo" soundtrack as well. This is a single FLAC file with the two stereo channels multiplexed. There's also a music and effects only track (appropriate for dubbing).

Figure 1: First I get the individual 5.1 surround tracks

Figure 1: First I get the individual 5.1 surround tracks

Naturally, I expand the zip file to access the contents:
$ mkdir Soundtrack
$ cd Soundtrack
Soundtrack$ unzip ../sintel-master-51-flac.zip Archive: ../sintel-master-51-flac.zip
creating: sintel-master-51-flac/
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-c.flac
creating: __MACOSX/
creating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-c.flac
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-l.flac
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-l.flac
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-lfe.flac
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-lfe.flac
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-ls.flac
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-ls.flac
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-r.flac
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-r.flac
inflating: sintel-master-51-flac/sintel-master-51-rs.flac
inflating: __MACOSX/sintel-master-51-flac/._sintel-master-51-rs.flac

Soundtrack$ ls __MACOSX sintel-master-51-flac
Soundtrack$ cd sintel-master-51-flac
Soundtrack/sintel-master-51-flac$ ls

sintel-master-51-c.flac           sintel-master-51-lfe.flac
sintel-master-51-l.flac            sintel-master-51-ls.flac
sintel-master-51-r.flac            sintel-master-51-rs.flac

Soundtrack/sintel-master-51-flac$

Load into Audacity

Now I launch audacity, and load each of the surround sound channels into a separate track. To do this, I select File→Import, and then select the file "sintel-master-51-l.flac", and that file is loaded into a track in Audacity. I then repeat this for the others, until I have all of them loaded (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Importing the separate FLAC channels into Audacity

Figure 2: Importing the separate FLAC channels into Audacity

Just to keep from having to scroll, I use View→Fit Vertically to compress all of the tracks into the visible window (Figure 3).

Figure 3: I can squeeze all the tracks into the window by using the

Figure 3: I can squeeze all the tracks into the window by using the "Fit Vertically" option

You'll notice that the track names are taken from the file names, and they're hard to read because the information that distinguished them is outside the window. I fix this by selecting the pull-down tab on each track, selecting "Name..." and altering it to something shorter to identify each channel (Figure 4). These labels are for me, they don't mean anything to Audacity.

Figure 4: I change the names to make it easier to recognize which channel is which

Figure 4: I change the names to make it easier to recognize which channel is which

At this point, I've loaded and labeled all my channels, so I now need to export them as a multi-channel FLAC.

Set Audacity to support multi-channel export

First, I have to make sure that Audacity is in the right mode to export multi-channel files. For this, I need to select Edit→Preferences and examine the "Export" tab. Here, I will need to make sure that the radio button for "Use Custom Mix" is set (Figure 5).

Figure 5: I set the export preferences to

Figure 5: I set the export preferences to "Use Custom Mix"

Export the file

Now I select File→Export to export the file. I will need to set a filename, optionally enter some metadata to include in the file, and finally I will be given a network diagram window that allows me to set which track will be stored in which numbered channel in the file (Figure 5). You'll note I used the abbreviation "MUX" which stands for "multiplexed" to indicate that all six audio tracks will be encoded in this file.

The convention for multichannel sound in FLAC files is documented in the FLAC format specification, and in the case of 5.1 surround sound it is: Left, Right, Center, LFE, Left Surround, Right Surround

The convention for multichannel sound in FLAC files is documented in the FLAC format specification, and in the case of 5.1 surround sound it is: Left, Right, Center, LFE, Left Surround, Right Surround. Of course, this is the order I loaded the files in, so the default mapping is correct as shown in Figure 5. But of course, I check this against the names I've given for each track to make sure that the order is indeed correct.

Then I click "Save", and I wait for the export to finish. After a few moments, the file will be saved to disk.

And that's it!

Figure 5: Exporting the tracks as a single 5.1 surround track

Figure 5: Exporting the tracks as a single 5.1 surround track

Testing

Out of curiousity, I tried re-loading the "MUX" file back into a new Audacity session. The behavior is pretty much what you would expect -- the file is divided up into separate tracks, which are represented in Audacity as mono tracks. The track names are derived from the file name, with a number appended to indicate the numerical channel they represent. Thus the "Left" channel is number one (i.e. it is labeled "sintel-master-51-mux 1"), and the "LFE" channel is number four ("sintel-master-51-mux 4").

Loading this file with VLC (VideonLAN Client), I can play it back as expected.

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