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Hydrogenaudio Forums > Lossless Audio Compression > Lossless / Other Codecs

optimus

Oct 12 2005, 01:09

I'm not sure if it's proper to ask questions about CUE file format here, but I think CUE file is most often used with lossless audio files.
A CUE file looks like this:

CODE

PERFORMER "Bjork"
TITLE "Medulla"
FILE "Bjork - Medulla.ape" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "Pleasure Is All Mine"
PERFORMER "Bjork"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Show Me Forgiveness"
PERFORMER "Bjork"
INDEX 01 03:25:05
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Where Is the Line?"
PERFORMER "Bjork"
INDEX 01 04:49:14
...
TRACK 14 AUDIO
TITLE "Triumph of a Heart"
PERFORMER "Bjork"
INDEX 01 40:53:26

I'm implementing CUE file format support in my transcoder.
After I looked into several CUE files, I found some tracks have more than one INDEX tag, INDEX 00 and INDEX 01. What does that mean? Which INDEX should be actually used.
If anyone has detailed documentations CUE file format, please also provide me.

Synthetic Soul

Oct 12 2005, 02:29

INDEX 01 is the normal start to a track.

An INDEX 00 entry is what most people refer to as a "pregap".

You can have INDEX numbers greater than 01 as well.

This wiki page may be useful.

The document generally thought of as the reference for cuesheets is Appendix A of the CDRWIN Users' Guide.

Here's a good page about gaps (INDEX 00 entries).

Alex B

Oct 12 2005, 07:59

The pregaps should be ignored when making separate audio tracks from disc image files & cue sheets.

In practise, the passage included in the first pregap should be skipped (if a pregap exists before the first standard audio track aka the first INDEX 01). The content of the resulting separate track should begin at INDEX 01. The passages included in the consequent pregaps should also be skipped, but this time the contents will be included in each previous track. Player programs and e.g. APL link file generators work in this way.

Sometimes artists and audio engineers play tricks and include hidden audio content in the pregap before the first track. Many stand-alone CD players can play these tracks when they are rewound before the track number 1. It would be nice if a converter could have an option for making a separate "track zero" for this content.

A good implementation should also be able to cope with custom cue sheets like this:

CODE

TITLE "My own best of compilation"
PERFORMER "Various Artists"
FILE "D:\The Artist\New Music\A Song.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "A Song"
    PERFORMER "The Artist"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "E:\Second Artist\Tr Music\05 - Tr 5.mpc" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Tr 5"
    PERFORMER "Second Artist"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "C:\Yet Another Artist\Best Of\Yet Another Artist - Best Of (CD image).flac" WAVE
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "A Nice Track"
    PERFORMER "Yet Another Artist"
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:21:74
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "A Very Good Track"
    PERFORMER "Yet Another Artist"
    INDEX 00 05:49:65
    INDEX 01 05:50:65
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "A So-So Track"
    PERFORMER "Yet Another Artist"
    INDEX 00 09:45:50
    INDEX 01 09:47:50
FILE "F:\Third Artist\Old Music\03 - An Old Track.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "An Old Track"
    PERFORMER "Third Artist"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00

A couple of links:
http://digitalx.org/cuesheet.html
http://www.pcnineoneone.com/howto/cdburnadv4.html

Edit: fixed a small logical error.

optimus

Oct 12 2005, 22:54

Thanks for all your information. I've just implemented CUE support (no separate "track zero" support yet, but will do it later). If you have interests, please have a try.

Drenholm

Oct 13 2005, 03:36

I think this is the authoritative guide to cuesheets:

ftp://64.251.26.164/pub/goldenhawk/download/cdrwin.pdf

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