# How to remove excessive padding from FLAC files?
**URL:** https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 30, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033 "2010-10-30T22:32:53Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2010, 10:32pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/1 "2010-10-30T22:32:53Z")
Mp3tag doesn't rewrite a FLAC file when removing artwork. It just turns it into (or adds to, I'm not certain how it works) a padding metadata block. If the artwork was very large this leaves a very large amount of unused space within the file. An album that I just downloaded had 370kB cover images embedded in each file. I've removed them and now I have more than 380kB of padding in every file.
How can I remove this padding and control the amount of padding in a FLAC file?
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### Author:  [@DazBYorks](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DazBYorks)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2010, 10:35pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/2 "2010-10-30T22:35:52Z")
A solution was posted [here](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/8891/1)
Daz
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### Author:  [@JJ\_Johnson](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/JJ_Johnson)
#### Post date: [October 30, 2010, 11:19pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/3 "2010-10-30T23:19:08Z")
Yes, I was just looking at metaflac. I'd like to leave some padding so that the files aren't rewritten if I make changes or add a comment. Does it really require two metaflac operations to accomplish this? I imagine that's rather slow, as each time the file would have to be rewritten in full.
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### Author:  [@DazBYorks](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/DazBYorks)
#### Post date: [November 2, 2010, 2:01am UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/4 "2010-11-02T02:01:35Z")
I believe so as it will have to write the file out after removing the padding. The speed all depends on the disk subsystem (and probably fragmentation) and CPU, etc., but it is something that can be done unattended, so you could let it run overnight.
Daz
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### Author:  [@AntzW](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/AntzW)
#### Post date: [November 21, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/5 "2018-11-21T21:02:10Z")
I used XMedia recode to remove the art, using flac to flac copy.
There is no recoding, or lost tag data.
I then added the art I wanted with MP3Tag.
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### Author:  [@system](https://community.mp3tag.de/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 9, 2026, 12:22pm UTC](https://community.mp3tag.de/t/how-to-remove-excessive-padding-from-flac-files/11033/6 "2026-02-09T12:22:39Z")