OggPCM

Alternate format for OggPCM

The following is an alternate format for OggPCM. This is a work in progress and not a final proposal.

Header Packet

Multibyte fields in the header packets are packed in big endian order, to be consistent with network byte order. A header packet contains the following fields:

32  "PCM " Codec identifier 
16  0x00   Version Major (breaks backwards compatability to increment)
16  0x00   Version Minor (backwards compatable, ie, more supported format id's)
32  [uint] PCM format
32  [uint] Significant bits
32  [uint] Sampling rate
32  [uint] Number of Channels (< 256)
16  [uint] Maximum number of frames per packet
16  [uint] Number of extra headers

The "Maximum number of frames per packet" field is meant to notify an application reading the file that no data packet will contain more than a certain number of frames. This not only makes implementation easier, but also provides information on how much needs to be buffered when streaming PCM files. A value of 0 means a maximum of 65536 frames.

The "significant bits" field specifies how many bits are actually used. The other bits MUST be zero. This can be used to support audio with any resolution. For example, 12-bit PCM can be supported as "16 bit PCM" for the format and 12 for the number of significant bits.

Extra Headers

Extra headers contain additional information about the OggPCM stream. Each extra header is defined as:

32  [uint] Header ID
...        Header data

Channel Mapping Header

The channel mapping header is defined as:

32 0x0000   Header ID
16 [uint]   Major version
16 [uint]   Minor version
32 [uint]   Channel type
32xN [uint] Channel map (one for each channel)

As an example, stereo might be encoded as:

channel_type = OGG_CHANNEL_MAP_STEREO
channel_map [0] = OGG_CHANNEL_STEREO_LEFT
channel_map [1] = OGG_CHANNEL_STEREO_RIGHT

or as:

channel_type = OGG_CHANNEL_MAP_STEREO
channel_map [0] = OGG_CHANNEL_STEREO_RIGHT
channel_map [1] = OGG_CHANNEL_STEREO_LEFT

All channel_types less than 0x80000000 are reserved for use by Xiph and all the ones above are allowed for application specific extensions.

Comment packet

A "vorbis comment" packet follows the header and the optional extra headers, if any. The format used is the same as for Vorbis with the exception that there is no packet identifier (so the packet is exactly like it is for Speex).

Data Packets

Data packets contain the raw PCM audio in interleaved format (complete frames are encoded sequentially) with the following definitions/restrictions:

• A PCM "frame" is composed of samples for all channels at a given time.
• Any OggPCM packet should only contain complete frames (ie samples for all channels at a given sampling instance). Partial frames are forbidden.
• There is no padding allowed in a frame except when some bits (<8) are needed to complete a byte. This means that packet size has a direct relationship to the number of frames in the packet (for purposes of seeking).

Supported PCM Formats

Format ID  Short Name             Description
 -- Integer coding
 0x00000000    OGGPCM_FMT_S8          Signed integer 8 bit
 0x00000001    OGGPCM_FMT_U8          Unsigned integer 8 bit
 0x00000002    OGGPCM_FMT_S16_LE      Signed integer 16 bit little endian
 0x00000003    OGGPCM_FMT_S16_BE      Signed integer 16 bit big endian
 0x00000004    OGGPCM_FMT_S24_LE      Signed integer 24 bit little endian
 0x00000005    OGGPCM_FMT_S24_BE      Signed integer 24 bit big endian
 0x00000006    OGGPCM_FMT_S32_LE      Signed integer 32 bit little endian
 0x00000007    OGGPCM_FMT_S32_BE      Signed integer 32 bit big endian
 --
 -- Compressed PCM
 0x00000008    OGGPCM_FMT_ULAW        G.711 u-law encoding (8 bit)
 0x00000009    OGGPCM_FMT_ALAW        G.711 A-law encoding (8 bit)
 0x0000000A    OGGPCM_FMT_ULAW12      Wideband u-law encoding (12 bit)
 0x0000000B    OGGPCM_FMT_ALAW12      Wideband A-law encoding (12 bit)
 --
 -- IEEE Floating point coding
 0x00000010    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT32_LE    IEEE Float (-1,1) 32 bit little endian
 0x00000011    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT32_BE    IEEE Float (-1,1) 32 bit big endian
 0x00000012    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT64_LE    IEEE Float (-1,1) 64 bit little endian
 0x00000013    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT64_BE    IEEE Float (-1,1) 64 bit big endian
 0x00000014    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT32B_LE   IEEE Float (-32768,32768) 32 bit little endian
 0x00000015    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT32B_BE   IEEE Float (-32768,32768) 32 bit big endian
 0x00000016    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT64B_LE   IEEE Float (-32768,32768) 64 bit little endian
 0x00000017    OGGPCM_FMT_FLT64B_BE   IEEE Float (-32768,32768) 64 bit big endian