Skip to main content ↑ ↓

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: What does "Optimize File Layout" actually do? (Read 1045 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

What does "Optimize File Layout" actually do?

I apologize if this is a FAQ, but I assure you I have searched for an answer and - surprisingly - found none.

I would like to understand what the "Optimize File Layout" utility does, before I decide whether to apply it to my library.  Can anyone shed some light on what it does?  What are the benefits or risks?  Am I likely to break anything?  In particular, does it remove tags which are not part of the tag mapping scheme shown here? https://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Foobar2000:ID3_Tag_Mapping

Note that my library is a mix of M4A and MP3, so I'm also curious to know if it treats these different formats differently?

Thanks

Brent

Re: What does "Optimize File Layout" actually do?

Reply #2 –
Yeah, I saw that thread, talking about the file reduction.  I know I don't want to do that - drive space just isn't that important these days.  But it doesn't say much about what "optmizing" the layout actually means.
 

Re: What does "Optimize File Layout" actually do?

Reply #3 –
I am not sure if any of these is needed if your application actually can read the tags. If you got tags that are only partially visible in some application, then maybe. (fb2k can read it, obviously, otherwise it wouldn't be able to re-write it.)


In there there was mentioned a "moves tags before other content if feasible". That could clean up some MP4 atoms layout, which might be a bit messy sometimes. For all that I know it could possibly also mean to move ID3v2 tags to the front (I think v2.4 can be at either end).

I don't know precisely what formats could have multiple padding chunks, but if they do, consolidating tags-with-content first and padding afterwards might be more idiot-proof? (Hm, is there any sense to organizing pictures this or that way?)


Note that the lossless formats that use APEv2 tags put them at the end. (If you have access to the entire file, that is no problem; more important, those formats are that way and so it isn't really a question.  They don't have the MP3 mess of retro-hacks nor the MP4 mess of too many ways to write atoms.)