tflac

A single-file FLAC encoding library. Does not use any C library functions, does not allocate memory directly (it leaves that up to you to figure out). Compatible with C89.

Use case: you want to generate FLAC audio without requiring an external library, and simplicity is your main concern, not compression or speed.

Status

tflac currently supports the following subframe encodings:

CONSTANT
FIXED
VERBATIM

It's roughly equivalent to compressing with FLAC's "-0" switch.

Building

In one C file define TFLAC_IMPLEMENTATION before including tflac.h.

#define TFLAC_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "tflac.h"

Options

There's a few compile-time options you can set:

Define TFLAC_32BIT_ONLY and tflac will not use 64-bit types at all, and instead emulate 64-bit types with a pair of 32-bit ints.
Define TFLAC_DISABLE_SSE2 to disable SSE2 detection.
Define TFLAC_DISABLE_SSSE3 to disable SSSE3 detection.
Define TFLAC_DISABLE_SSE4_1 to disable SSE4.1 detection.
Define TFLAC_PUBLIC if you need to customize function decorators for public API functions.
Define TFLAC_PRIVATE if you need to customize function decorators for private API functions.

For example, if you're building a DLL on Windows and want to export the public API functions you could define TFLAC_PUBLIC as __declspec(dllexport) like so:

#define TFLAC_IMPLEMENTATION
#define TFLAC_PUBLIC __declspec(dllexport)
#include "tflac.h"

Usage

Detect your CPU features

Call tflac_detect_cpu() before doing anything, like as early in your program as possible, before you create any threads etc.

This will attempt to check your CPU type, and set some internal global variables. For example, if your CPU supports SSE2, the library will swap the default fixed-order calculators for a set that use SSE2.

Get memory and initialize things.

You'll have to create a tflac struct. The whole struct definition is provided so you can allocate it on the stack, or call tflac_size() to get the structure size at runtime. Initialize it with tflac_init().

You then need to set 4 parameters. You can either set the tflac struct fields yourself, or use setter functions (tflac_set_blocksize(), tflac_set_samplerate(), etc).

audio block size
channels
bit depth
sample rate

You then need to acquire a memory chunk, to be used by tflac internally for storing residuals. You can get this needed memory size with a C macro, or with a function. The only required parameter is your audio block size.

Once you've set your parameters and acquired memory, call tflac_validate() with the memory you've allocated for tflac's internals. It will make sure your parameters are sane, that the memory chunk is large enough, and proceed to set up all of its internal pointers to the memory chunk.

Note: the library will not free this memory for you since the library didn't allocate it.

Generate some FLAC!

You'll need to write out the fLaC stream marker and a STREAMINFO block. The library has a function for generating a STREAMINFO block, since that's a required metadata block. Other blocks are pretty straightforward to create, I don't plan to include that functionality.

You'll need a buffer for storing encoded frames. You can find the maximum required buffer size with a C macro, or with a function. The parameters are your audio block size, channels, and bit depth.

You can have your audio in interleaved or planar format, and as either tflac_s16 or tflac_s32. The encode functions are:

tflac_encode_s16i: tflac_s16 samples in a 1-dimensional array (tflac_s16*), interleaved.
tflac_encode_s16p: tflac_s16 samples in a multi-dimensional array (tflac_s16**).
tflac_encode_s32i: tflac_int32 samples in a 1-dimensional array (tflac_int32*), interleaved.
tflac_encode_s32p: tflac_int32 samples in a multi-dimensional array (tflac_int32**).

tflac_s16 is a typedef for int16_t, and tflac_s32 is a typedef for int32_t in most cases.

#define TFLAC_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "tflac.h"

#define BLOCKSIZE 1152
#define CHANNELS 2
#define BITDEPTH 16
#define SAMPLERATE 44100

int main(int argc, const char *argv[]) {
    /* get the size we need to alloc for tflac internal memory */
    tflac_u32 memory_size = tflac_size_memory(BLOCKSIZE);

    /* get a chunk for tflac internal memory */
    void* memory = malloc(memory_size);

    /* get the size we need to alloc for the output buffer */
    tflac_u32 buffer_size = tflac_size_frame(BLOCKSIZE, CHANNELS, BITDEPTH);

    /* get a hunk for our buffer */
    void* buffer = malloc(buffer_size);

    /* this will be used to know how much of the buffer to write
       after calls to encode */
    tflac_u32 buffer_used = 0;

    tflac t;

    tflac_init(&t);

    /* set some parameters */
    t.blocksize = BLOCKSIZE;
    t.samplerate = SAMPLERATE;
    t.bitdepth = BITDEPTH;
    t.channels = CHANNELS;

    /* validate our parameters and tell tflac what memory to use */
    tflac_validate(&t, memory, memory_size);

    /* open a file and write out the stream marker */
    FILE* output = fopen("some-file.flac","wb");
    fwrite("fLaC", 1, 4, output);

    /* encode the STREAMINFO block and write it out */
    tflac_encode_streaminfo(&t, 1, buffer, buffer_size, &buffer_used);
    fwrite(buffer, 1, buffer_used, output);

    /* loop until you run out of audio */
    while(have_audio()) {

        /* hand-waving over this part, here we're using a 2d array of audio samples
        and assuming it's always BLOCKSIZE samples */
        tflac_s32** samples = get_some_audio_somehow();

        /* encode your audio samples into a FLAC frame */
        tflac_encode_s32p(&t, BLOCKSIZE, samples, buffer, buffer_size, &buffer_used);

        /* and write it out */
        fwrite(buffer, 1, buffer_used, output);
    }

    free(buffer);
    free(ptr);
}

LICENSE

BSD Zero Clause (see the LICENSE file).

jprjr/tflac