Patent ID: 8095375

Claim:
A method for storing audio information in a particular file format, comprising: a computing device storing, as part of a single audio file that has said particular file format, audio data that represents an audio stream that was produced as a result of an audio encoding of audio by an audio encoder in conformance with any one of a plurality of audio encoding formats that are supported by the particular file format; wherein the plurality of audio encoding formats that are supported by the particular format include at least one constant bit rate audio encoding format, at least one constant sample frames per packet-variable bit rate audio encoding format, and at least one variable sample frames per packet-variable bit rate audio encoding format; wherein said audio data comprises one or more packets, each packet of the one or more packets having boundaries within the audio stream that depend on which of the plurality of audio encoding formats is the actual audio encoding format for the audio data; wherein each packet of the one or more packets comprises one or more sample frames; wherein each sample frame comprises one sample for each of one or more channels; wherein at least one of the one or more packets includes a plurality of samples; wherein storing said single audio file includes: determining which of the plurality of audio encoding formats is the actual audio encoding format for the audio data, and based on the actual audio encoding format for the audio data, storing, in said single audio file, metadata information from which the boundaries, within the audio stream, of each packet of the one or more packets may be determined; wherein storing said metadata information comprises: storing, in said single audio file, a value for a first field that indicates whether the actual audio encoding format for the audio data is a constant bit rate audio encoding format or a variable bit rate audio encoding format, and storing, in said single audio file, a value for a second field that indicates whether the actual audio encoding format for the audio data is a variable sample frames per packet audio encoding format or a constant sample frames per packet audio encoding format.