Man1 - rifftree.1

rifftree - Print RIFF tree structure of an arbitrary RIFF file.

rifftree [OPTIONS] FILE

The Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) is a simple, binary file format intended for tree like data structures. Many proprietary file formats are built on top of the RIFF format (e.g. media file formats like WAV, AVI, DLS, GIG). Data in a RIFF file is encapsulated into so called “chunks”. There are list chunks (containers) which can be seen as nodes in the data tree and thus can have children (that is can have subchunks) and there are normal data chunks which can be seen as leafs in the data tree and thus cannot have children. The regular chunks (leafs of the tree) contain the actual data to be stored. The list chunks themselves (nodes / containers) contain no data on their own.

Each list chunk and normal chunk has a 32 bit (non unique) ID, which is usually a four character human readable ASCII text, reflecting the purpose of the respective list or chunk. This application will print out this ID for each chunk found. Advantage of human readable list/chunk IDs is that files based on this practice can easily be analyzed manually with a hex editor.

A normal RIFF file always starts with a list chunk (either with chunk ID “RIFF” or “RIFX), which contains all other chunks. There are no other chunks outside the boundaries of that first chunk in a normal RIFF file. You may override this expectation with arguments described below though (see argument ‘–flat’), for being able to open other, RIFF-like files.

* FILE*

Filename of the RIFF based file.

* -v*

Print version and exit.

* -s*

Print the size of each RIFF chunk.

* –flat*

First chunk of file is not a list (container) chunk. You might want to use this if the file is not a “real” RIFF file. A “real” RIFF file always has a RIFF list (container) chunk as very first chunk in a file, and it expects all chunks to be contained in that first (list/container) chunk. So in a “real” RIFF file there would also be no other chunks outside the scope (that is after end) of the file’s first chunk. Many primitive file formats though are a flat sequence of ordinary data chunks (not list/container chunks). If you are using this option then you must also use –first-chunk-id as well.

* –first-chunk-id CKID*

Currently only used in combination with –flat. CKID shall be the 32 bit chunk ID of the very first chunk in the file. If the first chunk in the file does not have the given chunk ID, then this application will abort. This ensures that the file is actually the format you expected. The argument expected here shall be a four character human readable ASCII text, since RIFF chunk IDs are usually human readable ASCII strings.

* –big-endian*

File is in big endian format. Currently only used in combination with –flat. Without –flat the endian type will automatically be detected. If you are using –flat and do neither provide –big-endian nor –little-endian, then the native endian type of your machine will be used by default.

* –little-endian*

File is in little endian format. Currently only used in combination with –flat. Without –flat the endian type will automatically be detected. If you are using –flat and do neither provide –big-endian nor –little-endian, then the native endian type of your machine will be used by default.

Show the file structure of a standard RIFF file (in the following example a Gigasampler/GigaStudio file) and show the exact sizes of each chunk in the file:

  rifftree -s piano.gig

Do the same for a Korg Trinity/Triton/OASYS/Kronos sound file (which is not a standard RIFF file, but a RIFF-alike file):

  rifftree -s --flat --first-chunk-id MSP1 --big-endian PIANO_000.KMP

dlsdump(1), gigdump(1), korgdump(1)

Check and report bugs at http://bugs.linuxsampler.org

Application and manual page written by Christian Schoenebeck <cuse@users.sf.net>