A long time ago, two years in fact, I created this thread:
I had asked for something to be added in MP3tag: to be able to see and remove padding from FLAC files natively within MP3tag.
As you know, adding a cover art to FLAC files creates the necessary space within the file to accomodate it. However, what you may not know, removing the cover art does NOT remove the extra space that the cover art needed. You need to use metaflac.exe to sanitize the tags.
So, I would like to ask Florian where in its checklist is this feature. He clearly stated in the thread I created above that they did add the feature onto the to-do list.
For now, adding the custom column like I said in the thread above is still possible but, then, you still have to use metaflac separately to remove the padding or use foobar2000 with its "Optimize size" function (right click file -> Properties -> Tools button -> Optimize size).
Adding this function natively would be so much time save!
I'm just curious:
How much hard disc- or SSD space would you gain in your own collection by "optimizing" the FLAC size?
And how much time would you loose, because you realize sometime later, that you need to add some metadata and therefore every single optimized file has to be completely rewritten?
Probably not much, but again, I'm kind of anal about this as I absolutely loathe cover art embedding. Some people embed huge cover arts (several megabytes per file) and I finally want a one-stop app to remove everything. Never been able to call metaflac with MP3tag despite all the supposed solutions to this. Always has been: remove cover with MP3tag then load files into foobar2000 and remove padding. Ugh.
For all future reader searching for the tool definition to remove the Cover Art and padding space for FLAC files in Ctrl+O, Tools:
Adjust the Path: to the location where you have saved the two files metaflac.exe and libFLAC.dll
if you add it in the Windows version of Mp3tag (available from here https://xiph.org/flac/download.html)
The Parameter needed to remove an existing cover and the used padding space for it: --remove --block-type=PICTURE,PADDING --dont-use-padding "%_path%"
The explanation from the help file of metaflac for the used options:
--dont-use-padding By default metaflac tries to use padding where possible
to avoid rewriting the entire file if the metadata size
changes. Use this option to tell metaflac to not take
advantage of padding this way.
--remove
Remove one or more metadata blocks from the metadata. Unless
--dont-use-padding is specified, the blocks will be replaced with padding.
I didn't come here in search of alternate solution with dependencies. I came here to ask Florian what was the status of a BUILT-IN solution. A one-click no bullock solution that will work like in Foobar2000. Using outside tools is not a built-in solution; it's a workaround.
Here's the thing. I backup my settings and all that but, in the event I lose my backups and can't recover my setup, I'll have to reprogram this workaround and I ABSOLUTELY DETEST working with any kind of CLI or arguments. It needs to be dead simple for me to go that way.
Just an observation on my side:
a lot of suggestions for functions for which there is something that you call
have never been implemented.
So I think that until the day when your suggestion becomes a function that you like better you have to live with the "workarounds".
