Noncompliant to single wav cuesheet, Any automated tool? Options

[DrGreen]

Hi,

i'm sorry if this was already asked here, but I couldn't found it with search.

Is there any tool that can convert a multiple files noncompliant cuesheet to a single image one?

The reason for this is that I have some albums stored as multiple files with a noncompliant cuesheet with gaps append to the end of previous track. Now I would like to join the files and create one appropriate cuesheet with all gaps preserved.

I've read the EAC CUE Sheets wiki page, and I see that it contains the method for converting, but it's difficult to apply it to a lot of cues by hand.

So I was thinking on some tool, or other clerver and quicker method to do it.

Thanks!

[Fandango]

If you rip the CD in single-file mode does EAC or whatever write any duplicate timestamps like that in the cuesheet?

I don't know...

I got that rip from a good friend... so I can only speculate about the way it was created, sorry. It could be that the cue sheet got messed up in a text editor. Maybe. At least that's my guess.

I think valnar might be able to test this... in case he didn't get his rip from a good friend, too.

Is the data track saved to a file somewhere during the ripping process?

No.

Well, this problem here is rooted in EAC's non-compliant way of creating cue sheets and its incapability of extracting data tracks. When creating all four kinds of cue sheets for a Audio+Data CD, the only cue sheet with this "TRACK 08 MODEx/2xxx" in it was the one made with the method labeled "(non-compliant)". There's also no corresponding "FILE", which also brakes the standard apart from the MODEx/2xxx and the obvious fact that mixing single WAV and a raw data track in one cue isn't really supported by a lot of apps (I know none).

Anyway this is what EAC gives us for such a Multi-Session CD in case the non-compliant cue sheet was created:

TRACK 08 MODEx/2xxx
TITLE "CD-Rom Track For PC and Mac "
PERFORMER "Creation Rebel"
INDEX 00 04:10:15

But a slightly more compliant data track entry would look like this:

FILE "Track 8.bin" BINARY
TRACK 08 MODE2/2352
TITLE "CD-Rom Track For PC and Mac "
PERFORMER "Creation Rebel"
ISRC 000000000000
INDEX 00 04:10:15

Since the data track won't be extracted by EAC, when using copy - EAC has no data extraction capabilities whatsoever, thus creating only a pseudo data track entry - it could at least write the cue sheet differently, commenting the data track entry out for instance.

Ok, so back to CUETools:

The error messages of CUETools are as follows: When using the unmodified cue sheet I get the "Track type must be audio." which makes sense because CUETools think TRACK 08 belongs to the last FILE which is audio.

When correcting the cue sheet my way, but entering a bogus FILE path, I get the error message that the file is missing. That's correct, too.

When providing a .bin file. I get the error message "Unsupported audio input file". Which doesn't make sense since FILE "" BINARY is binary and not audio. At least CUETools is trying!

So, what to do?

That's very, very tricky IMHO.

Deleting the last TRACK by hand works just fine, but of course it's more comfortable if CUETools would ignore or correct them in some way. Since EAC does create these broken cue sheets and you can't expect a newbie to edit his cue sheets... it's important that you do something: Either omitting, appending or automatically correcting these MODEx/2xxx tracks... simply leaving them out would be the easiest way and EAC's standard behaviour anyway when converting from non-compliant to any of the other three cue sheet modes.

In case you want to go beyond EAC compatibility, for example putting Audio+Data in one raw image file in case the Data Session was extracted with another ripping application other than EAC or was recreated with mkisofs from the copied files, then here are some thoughts of mine:

I'm not that familiar with the cue sheet standards, but still I thought a fixed FILE '' BINARY won't do any sane application any harm. So I've tested it with two "single WAV" cue sheets - one appended with the broken and unchanged data track and one with a fixed and compliant one - and loaded them into foobar2000 0.9: got me the complaint about data tracks not being supported. Then I've tested the same two cue sheets with Burrrn, both gave me erros. Even IsoBuster does not support single audio wav + data track. Well, this is not a surprise at all, since it's not much different from a non-compliant cue sheet like EAC is popular for, with the exception that not the INDEX/TRACK order is the problem but two image files in one cue sheet being of incompatible format, one WAV and the other one RAW (or BINARY).

Nevertheless my suggestion is to support at least two of the things I mentioned above, making it selectable via a check box: omitting the data track or commenting it out (for EAC compliance and even 100% reconstruction of a non-compliant cue sheet later with that MODEc/2xxx if you like) is a must IMHO. Then either simply appending + autofixing the TRACK ?? MODE2/2352 (like I did in my second code snippet - FILE path might be requested via a "open file dialog" or simply "" used) or the making of a true single RAW image and compliant cue sheet (like IsoBuster creates them for example). Personally I would go for implementing the latter since it is more widely supported than this double image cue sheet I made by hand. All applications I tested it with (foobar2000, Burrrn, IsoBuster and burnatonce) refused to accept it for the various reasons. So people who want to make a true 1:1 backup can use the single RAW image + cue, and those wanting to do stuff with the audio can shoose the EAC (omitting) approach.

Cheers!

This post has been edited by Fandango: Aug 2 2006, 21:56