HydrogenAudio

Hosted Forums => foobar2000 => General - (fb2k) => Topic started by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-04 23:03:25

Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-04 23:03:25
I just lost +20 precious FLAC files d-t corruption.

This is a two year old Seagate drive that is shock-mounted, behind dust covers, properly cooled and fed by a $300 PSU.

WTF!!!

Foobar needs to have error corrective capabilities! Back up a .par to another harddrive, check-sum, skip minor errors functions etc.

To not be able to decode a file because one single bit is missing (which I suspect is the case) is pretty damn stupid.

We're all building our .flac libraries now... take this as a warning!

.flac is a fragile format and your files may not survive your next copy, disk transfer or dropped usb-disk.

I registered only to say this.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: eahm on 2012-09-04 23:07:37
...not if every time you copy/move them you use a CRC copier checker and a CRC verifier every time you backup them. You protected the HD and that was a good move but your soft spot was on the software side.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: Ron Jones on 2012-09-04 23:09:01
This is a two year old Seagate drive that is shock-mounted, behind dust covers, properly cooled and fed by a $300 PSU.

Despite these all being good things, they do not make for an impervious hard disk.

To not be able to decode a file because one single bit is missing (which I suspect is the case) is pretty damn stupid.

This suspicion is based on what data?
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: xnor on 2012-09-04 23:16:21
Foobar needs to have error corrective capabilities! Back up a .par to another harddrive, check-sum, skip minor errors functions etc.

There's foo_verifier if that's what you're looking for.

Quote
your files may not survive your next copy, disk transfer or dropped usb-disk.

That's what backups are for.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-04 23:20:47
...not if every time you move them you use a CRC copier checker and a CRC verifier every time you backup them. You protected the HD and that was a good move but your soft spot was on the software side.


My point exactly - I know hardware, I build my own computers and cars, I'm not a software guru, I can learn to do what you suggest but and the end of the day I just want to listen to music. It would be great for foobar to have a Raid5 similar feature but on local disks. Data integrity redundancy.

This is a two year old Seagate drive that is shock-mounted, behind dust covers, properly cooled and fed by a $300 PSU.
Despite these all being good things, they do not make for an impervious hard disk.


I will not argue with that.

Point being made: these were favorable conditions above and beyond what you will discover home at Mr Average Joe. Lots of people have Seagate, lots of people mount them in dust covered tin boxes with
$30 PSU's. Some people live next to railroads. This was not the case.

However - Flac and foobar just messed up my day by being a fragile format.

To not be able to decode a file because one single bit is missing (which I suspect is the case) is pretty damn stupid.

This suspicion is based on what data?


+20 years intuition from working with computers, but I could be wrong.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: washu on 2012-09-04 23:29:56
My point exactly - I know hardware, I build my own computers and cars, I'm not a software guru, I can learn to do what you suggest but and the end of the day I just want to listen to music. It would be great for foobar to have a Raid5 similar feature but on local disks. Data integrity redundancy.


Why should foobar do this?  Should Word Raid5 doc files?  Should Photoshop Raid5 images?  It makes absolutely no sense for general application layer software do do this job.  Even if it could, it would be useless if a drive died.  This is a job for the OS, not applications.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-04 23:36:01
My point exactly - I know hardware, I build my own computers and cars, I'm not a software guru, I can learn to do what you suggest but and the end of the day I just want to listen to music. It would be great for foobar to have a Raid5 similar feature but on local disks. Data integrity redundancy.


Why should foobar do this?  Should Word Raid5 doc files?  Should Photoshop Raid5 images?  It makes absolutely no sense for general application layer software do do this job.  Even if it could, it would be useless if a drive died.  This is a job for the OS, not applications.


You are correct - and I would agree with you.

Only that .flac seems to be unusually susceptible to corruption. I suspect that when it plays a song it reads every single bit and also REQUIRES every single bit to decode. Word and Photoshop have quite big margins for error.

Why can't foobar just "decode past error"?
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: xnor on 2012-09-04 23:37:04
Also, what would you rather have? A format that immediately tells you when some bits flipped or a format that doesn't care and when you play the files and finally notice clicks and pops you've probably lost a whole lot more tracks than just 20.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-04 23:44:00
Also, what would you rather have? A format that immediately tells you when some bits flipped or a format that doesn't care and when you play the files and finally notice clicks and pops you've probably lost a whole lot more tracks than just 20.


I'd like one that tells me that something is up but still manages to play the file.

Better yet - I'd like one that plays the file and restores it as it was, warning me that something is up so I can replace the hd.

Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: db1989 on 2012-09-05 00:15:55
It seems this was already moved from General Audio to here, but I have to question whether the things you want confer any obligation on foobar2000, as opposed to countless other more relevant points in your computing pipeline—hardware, file system, file format, OS, and ultimately your own preparedness and vigilance—, meaning that it might be best suited to a final home in Off-Topic.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: LoudAsshole on 2012-09-05 01:21:23
It seems this was already moved from General Audio to here, but I have to question whether the things you want confer any obligation on foobar2000, as opposed to countless other more relevant points in your computing pipeline—hardware, file system, file format, OS, and ultimately your own preparedness and vigilance—, meaning that it might be best suited to a final home in Off-Topic.


You are not wrong - and if you are not wrong you might be close to being right.

But you (and whoever is reading this) should realize it's not about *obligation* but about *service*.

I realize foobar2k is freeware, I got i for free. Free means I have no complaints, unless it's a bullet to my stomache - in which case I might have some.

Never the less - why did apple become so big? Because they make difficult things easy.

If foobar2k is going to get even bigger you need to make it even easier.

I am a technical guy, and I just had +20 files rendered unplayable.

The girl you're trying to date - yeah, she's not even going to find her way to this forum.

But she might be a foobar2k user too.

I'm saying that I had +20 files rendered completely unplayable d-t God-knows-what on what is an otherwise 100% stable machine.

If there are smart programmers out there who think I'm making a valid point - run with it.

Otherwise I'm just the Loud Asshole I claim to be.

Over and out.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: jayess on 2012-09-05 02:10:04
H'mmm, this thread should have been appended to that .wav vs. .flac poll thread. Chalk this one up to another reason I'm sticking with .wav when I rip CD's.

Speaking of corruption, has anyone seen this Microsoft Windows 7 hotfix for a SNAFU in regards to sampling?

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2653312 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2653312)
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: db1989 on 2012-09-05 02:25:14
Yes, we’ve already seen that (twice), just as we’ve already questioned your logic as regards WAV vs. FLAC; thanks for posting yet more unsolicited off-topic stuff, though.

OP: I’m not saying I don’t see your points, but all I meant was that it’s not really an issue of making foobar2000 easy when you’re asking for error-correcting abilities above and beyond the usual remit or perhaps even capability (considering limitations of formats, hardware, etc.) of it, any other audio player, or any non-specialised application. I don’t think it’s an issue of ease-of-use but just of foobar2000 doing what it’s meant to do and leaving other tasks up to other software meant for those purposes and to the user’s own organisation.

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Never the less - why did apple become so big? Because they make difficult things easy.
Should this be directly relevant? I don’t think iTunes would have spared you the loss of your files even if it were able to play them, and I don’t really foresee it going in the direction that you might want foobar2000 to. And, again, foobar2000 is not geared towards ‘easiness’ as an overriding goal, especially when the definition includes features that have very little directly to do with playing audio.

I’m not meaning to pick points for the sake of it, just offering my opinion (and not as a developer or anyone with a real official connection, FWIW).
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: washu on 2012-09-05 03:43:34
Never the less - why did apple become so big? Because they make difficult things easy.

iTunes most certainly cannot deal with this situation any better than foobar.  A corrupt file on disk cannot be "fixed" by application software unless the format was specifically designed with this in mind.  Almost no files outside of some archive and backup formats have this feature.  No music formats that I know of have it.

Quote
I am a technical guy, and I just had +20 files rendered unplayable.

I don't mean to be rude, but if you were really technical you would realize that this problem is not in foobar's domain, but much lower level.

Quote
I'm saying that I had +20 files rendered completely unplayable d-t God-knows-what on what is an otherwise 100% stable machine.

A 100% stable machine will not protect from hard disk failures.  Nothing can except RAID (or similar) and backups. 
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: DigitalMan on 2012-09-05 05:36:49
OP: I see your point and you could contribute to the fb2k code instead of just ranting.

Plugin, help Peter, etc.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: Case on 2012-09-05 06:32:51
This thread troubles me. No one told the topic starter that single bit errors are not stopping FLAC files from being decoded, unless header is corrupted and the files can't be recognized as FLACs. The decoder in foobar decodes past errors in the bitstream and just reports about them in its console.
And to whoever says WAV is more reliable: header corruption with those files can make them unrecognizable too. But bitstream differences in those files will not be detectable by software, one can only check for them by manually listening.
LoudAssHole, if you wish, you could upload a file to be checked what is broken in it that causes the problem.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: probedb on 2012-09-05 08:32:34
1 bit being corrupt in a FLAC file will not make it unplayable as Case has stated.

People who come onto forums shouting (capitals are shouting) and saying they've spent umpteen billion pounds on their system and that they've worked in IT for 600+ years should know better.

HDDs will fail, no matter what you do, they will fail. This is nothing to do with the software so I don't understand your reasoning for blaming foobar for it. it's like blaming Word when a word document becomes corrupt or Photoshop when a JPEG becomes corrupt.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: Kohlrabi on 2012-09-05 08:36:01
I realize foobar2k is freeware, I got i for free. Free means I have no complaints, unless it's a bullet to my stomache - in which case I might have some.
It's not foobar2000's or Peter's fault that your backup plan didn't work/was nonexistant. foobar2000 is not a backup solution, but an audio player.

Never the less - why did apple become so big? Because they make difficult things easy.
Apple is a huge company, and they offer an OS with a lot of accompanying software. foobar2000 is a freeware audio player made by Peter. Comparing a huge company and all their software to a single person and an audio player is kinda weird and pointless.

If foobar2k is going to get even bigger you need to make it even easier.
Again, foobar2000 is an audio player and is and should not be responsible for data integrity.
Title: foobar needs to have error correcting/backup features
Post by: shakey_snake on 2012-09-05 13:14:33
If foobar2k is going to get even bigger you need to make it even easier.
Again, foobar2000 is an audio player and is and should not be responsible for data integrity.

And yet, it provides (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_verifier) more tools to help you verify your data integrity than most software would be arsed to do. Hell, it even fixes a lot of common problems in popular formats.

Besides the typical, hysterical, woe-to-me reaction to the fact that he's lost data, I don't see how OP cannot see how foobar2000 is above and beyond the call of duty here.