Why dues not Windows support FLAC? and when will it come?

Question

The future is digital, but people who care about good sound quality need a better format than mp3, and a free lossless format that is supported by everyone.

FLAC has proved to be that format.

Answer 1

Windows will likely not ever support any claimed 'patent free' audio or video codec in the box.  There is a lot of risk -- that is, that someone actually holds a patent on some technology used in the codec but has not come forward because there is no money in it yet -- and limited gain.  We do try and make it as easy as possible for third party codecs to be installed so that people can use whatever format they like.

Answer 2

I believe someone else made a custom MFT for FLAC:

http://www.afreecodec.com/windows/media-foundation-flac-codec-49893.html

Answer 3

might be just a link to this : http://sourceforge.net/projects/mfflac/files/ (however, can´t find source code, might violate sf.net terms)

Answer 4

Windows 10 comes with both FLAC decoder and encoder.

On unknown FLAC encoder in Media Foundation: About Microsoft FLAC Audio Encoder MFT

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http://alax.info/blog/tag/directshow

Answer 5

I wrote about FLAC encoder, not decoder.

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http://alax.info/blog/tag/directshow

Answer 6

And your point is?

GUID is mentioned so often because of enumeration, such as logged result of MFTEnum API run. The encoder remains close to being unused anyway. As for outdated documentation I gave the proving links. I am not sure what exactly you disagree with by quoting my words.

Another fancy one: https://www.google.com/search?q=CLSID_CMSFLACEncMFT

Not documented, not a single mention as used by anyone, not a find on GitHub other than derivatives of respective SDK header. This is what I mean when I say "noone is aware of it".

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http://alax.info/blog/tag/directshow

Answer 7

Yes I still have 7 results opening https://www.google.com/search?q=MFAudioFormat_FLAC

You get 12500 results looking for something else? Well, good for you.

The point is that it's present for some time, it's operational but is not minimally documented. No wonder it's unknown so just rare people discover it. Curious ones found it, how are we supposed to understand whether other related APIs are compatible? This should have been exposed by respective MSDN update, this did not happen.

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http://alax.info/blog/tag/directshow