INSTALLATION:

- Unzip into the directory where you keep flac.exe. If you don't have flac.exe, get
it from the official FLAC website: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
- If you want to add FLAC tags to the encoded files, Tag.exe (v2.0.25 or newer) and
Tag.cfg need to be in the same directory as the frontend (or in the Path). Get
Tag.exe here: http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/
- Run FLAC frontend.exe

If you get an error when you try to run FLAC frontend you need one (or both) of the
following files. The error message indicates which one.
- Visual Basic 6 Runtime files. Get it here:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/vb60pro/Redist/sp5/WIN98Me/EN-
US/vbrun60sp5.exe
- mscomctl.ocx. You can get it here:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/download/MSCOMCTL.ZIP

USAGE:

Encoding / compressing:

- Drag and drop WAVE files from Windows Explorer into the FLAC frontend file list
or press the "Add files" button and put files on the list with the "Open" dialog.
- Select the compression level you want to use. 0 is fastest but worst compression,
8 is slowest but best compression. 5 is default and recommended.
- Select an output directory (optional).
- Press 'Encode'
- Note that all that FLAC frontend does is create and launch a batch file (go.bat).
This is done on the moment you press the 'Encode' button. So after that you can
safely close FLAC frontend.

About Replaygain:
There are two kinds of replaygain: radiogain and albumgain. Both values are always
stored in the file. In your player you can choose which one you want to use.
Important is that if you encode an album and want to keep the volume differences,
the mechanism that calculates the albumgain must know the gain of all album tracks.
Therefore all files must be on one command line. To do this check "Treat input
files as one album". (BTW. the lenght of a command line is limited to about 2000
characters. So if you have an album with a lot of tracks with very long names it's
possible that it won't work. Solution: shorter filenames).

Cuesheet:
If the cuesheet is in the same directory as the input file, you can just type in
the filename of the cuesheet (without the directory name).

Tag configuration:

FLAC tags are derived from the filename of the encoded file. Auto detection of
filename schemes will work fine in most cases. If it doesn't work for you, you can
enter your own (custom) filename scheme. Note that it should be the filename scheme
of the *encoded* files! The scheme is constructed using the following parameters
(these parameters can also be found in the tooltip of the textbox where they must
be entered):
T = title
A = artist
L = album
Y = year
C = comment
N = track number
G = genre
X = disregard

Example:
The encoded files are named like this:
C:\Music\U2 - All That You Can't Leave Behind\01 - Beautiful Day.flac
The scheme is: A - L\N - T

If some tag items cannot be found in the filename then enter it in the applicable
field.

Decoding / decompressing:

- Drag and drop FLAC files from Windows Explorer into the FLAC frontend file list
or press the "Add files" button and put files on the list with the "Open" dialog.
- Select 'Delete input files' if you wish.
- Select an output directory (optional).
- Press 'Decode'

Test the integrity of FLAC files:

- Drag and drop FLAC files from Windows Explorer into the FLAC frontend file list
or press the "Add files" button and put files on the list with the "Open" dialog.
- Press 'Test'

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FLAC website: http://flac.sourceforge.net/

Tag website: http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/

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Special thanks to Case who made the win2dos program for me. This program translates
Windows Latin characters to DOS ASCII characters. Filenames with accented
characters and umlauts in them now also get encoded!

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Visit the FLAC frontend homepage at: http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/speek.htm

Send comments to speek@myrealbox.com

----------------

Change log:

1.7
* Support for new features in FLAC 1.1.0: replaygain and cuesheets.

1.6
* Tag support.

1.5.1
* Minor bugs fixed.

1.5
* Normal and advanced interface. The frontend is now easier to use if you just want
to use basic options.
* The batchfile is now named go.bat (to prevent problems if someone would want to
do "flac" at the DOS prompt). If you are upgrading, you can delete flac.bat (and
also help.bat if it's there).

1.4
* Fixed a small GUI bug.

1.3:
* Removed the "Decode" button. Select the "-d" option to decode. If the files on
the list are FLAC files, the output files will be wave files.
* The window height is now also resizable.
* Maximize.
* Help button.

1.2:
* Changed the way presets are handled.
* For decoding you should now also select options (in previous versions de options
were discarded when decoding). For normal decoding -d will be OK.

1.1:
* Added lines between the text output of different files in the DOS window.