i-f [-n | scale] < shorts > floatsI-F(1)
NAME
i-f - convert 16-bit short integers to floats
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SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
i-f reads a stream of native, machine-format 16-bit signed short integers from standard input, multiplies each value by a scale factor, and writes the results to standard output as native single-precision floating point numbers.
The optional single argument selects the scaling:
If a numeric scale is given, each input value is multiplied by it. If -n is given, the scale is set to 1/32768, so that the full short integer range maps onto data in the range -1.0 to +1.0. With no argument the scale defaults to 1.0 and each short is simply widened to a float.
A scale of 0.0 is rejected as an error, as is reading from an interactive terminal.
This command is deprecated and scheduled for removal; it prints a deprecation warning on startup. It is the inverse of f-i(1), and is typically used in pipelines with other BRL-CAD signal-processing tools such as dmod(1) and dconv(1).
OPTIONS
- -n
-
Normalize: use a scale of 1/32768 so that full-range 16-bit signed input is mapped onto the range -1.0 to +1.0. Mutually exclusive with a numeric scale argument.
- scale
-
A floating point multiplier applied to every input sample during conversion. A scale of 0.0 is rejected as an error.
EXAMPLES
Example 1. Normalize full-scale audio samples to unit-range floats
i-f -n < signal.pcm > signal.fTreats the values in signal.pcm as full-range 16-bit signed samples
and rescales them to the range -1.0 to +1.0, producing a stream of
floats in signal.f suitable for further floating point processing.
Example 2. Apply an explicit gain in a processing pipeline
i-f 0.01 < input.shorts | dconv > output.fScales each short sample by 0.01 while converting to float, then feeds the resulting float stream into dconv(1) for further signal processing.
SEE ALSO
brlcad(1), f-i(1), i-d(1), i-a(1), dconv(1), dmod(1)
AUTHOR
BRL-CAD Team
COPYRIGHT
This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.
BUG REPORTS
Reports of bugs or problems should be submitted via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org