Cue sheet

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Cue Sheet in Notepad
Cue Sheet in Notepad

A cue sheet, or cue file, is an ASCII (plain text) file that specifies how the tracks of a compact disc should be laid out. Cue sheets commonly have a ".cue" filename extension. They were originally used for the CDRWIN CD recording program, but are also used with other CD software as well as music and video playback software.

For an audio CD, the cue sheet can specify titles and performers for the disc and its tracks as well as the names of one or more audio files to be used. MP3, WAV and BIN files are often used, although some programs support other formats. Cue sheets are especially useful when burning or listening to live sets where all tracks are recorded in one file.

Cue sheets are also used for many types of CDs in conjunction with an image file. The image file generally has a ".bin" extension.

A description of cue sheets and a list of cue sheet commands can be found in the CDRWIN user's guide.

Contents

[edit] Use for CD burning

The CD format allows for rapid skipping to any track on the disc. When the source audio for the CD is one long file, such as a recording of a live performance by a band, it will produce one single track on the CD preventing easy navigation of the CD. A cue sheet provided along with the recording allows certain software to split up the audio into separate tracks when burning the audio to CD. The listener can now skip to individual tracks the way they would be able to had the CD been produced commercially.

[edit] General listening use

Winamp with mp3Cue installed, showing a cue sheet for a DJ mix
Winamp with mp3Cue installed, showing a cue sheet for a DJ mix

More and more people now listen to audio on computers and portable MP3 players, stored as audio files on a hard drive. As such, it is therefore also useful to apply the cue sheet solution to this new playback medium. There are two standard approaches to this. The most universal is to split the original audio file into a series of separate files, one per track. This results in the equivalent of having ripped the CD with all the tracks separate. This works with all audio playback software and hardware, including Apple's popular iTunes and iPod products which cannot handle cue sheets.

The other approach (illustrated) is to integrate the current cue sheet into the audio player itself. This involves either providing a pseudo playlist (for example, an extra window) for the contents of the cue sheet, or adding a pseudo entry for each track into the main playlist. When the audio file containing the full performance is played, the cue sheet is opened and its tracks are shown in a special window or the main playlist window. This allows the listener to view which tune within the performance as a whole is presently playing, and to skip to any particular track within the set.

[edit] Cue sheet content

Cue sheets are comprised of lines of text comprising of commands with one or more parameters. These lines describe the audio as a whole as well as each individual track. Commands within the file – always written in capitals – include:

  • TITLE - the title of the work as a whole (at the start), or a specific track (after a TRACK line)
  • PERFORMER - the artist of the work as a whole (at the start), or a specific track (after a TRACK line)
  • FILE - the name of a file containing the source audio
  • TRACK - defines a track, providing its number and data type; the lines that follow it, such as INDEX, TITLE and PERFORMER, provide information on this track, and may appear in any order
  • INDEX - indicates the start position within the source audio where a given track begins, in MM:SS:FR (minute-second-frame) format (for example, 04:18:63 = 4 minutes, 18 seconds, 63 frames). Note that the maximum allowed value for CDDA frames is 74
  • FLAGS - various subcode flags per track. These flags are scarcely used on discs nowadays.

[edit] Example/Tutorial

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[edit] Scenario

Assume an MP3 named faithless - live in berlin.mp3, containing a live recording of the band Faithless's live performance in Berlin in 1998. At this concert Faithless performed eight of their own songs; the tracklisting would be as follows.

Faithless - Live in Berlin 1998
01. Faithless - Reverence
02. Faithless - She's My Baby
03. Faithless - Take The Long Way Home
04. Faithless - Insomnia
05. Faithless - Bring The Family Back
06. Faithless - Salva Mea
07. Faithless - Dirty Old Man
08. Faithless - God Is A DJ

Given the fact that the MP3 is one file containing the entire performance, burning it to a CD as-is would make it impossible to skip to individual songs.

[edit] Creating a cue sheet

To design the cue sheet, one must first find the points in the MP3 at which each song starts. Note that the times are cumulative: each track must have a later time than the previous one. In addition, the first track will always start at 00:00:00.

Example Track Times
01. 00:00:00
02. 06:42:00
03. 10:54:00
04. 17:04:00
05. 25:44:00
06. 30:50:00
07. 38:24:00
08. 42:35:00

Once the times are decided, open up any plaintext text editor, such as Notepad or TextEdit, and begin typing the file. The first lines will denote the disc information, and for this example will appear as:

TITLE "Live in Berlin, 1998"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
FILE "faithless - live in berlin.mp3" MP3

This will be followed by the information for each track, indented from the rest. The INDEX 01 line reads the same for each track, with the exception of the time value that follows it. TITLE and PERFORMER are optional.

TRACK 06 AUDIO
TITLE "Salva Mea"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
INDEX 01 30:50:00

After all the tracks and track times are added into the cue sheet, the finished product should look similar to the following

TITLE "Live in Berlin, 1998"
PERFORMER "Faithless"
FILE "faithless - live in berlin.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Reverence"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "She's My Baby"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 06:42:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Take The Long Way Home"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 10:54:00
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "Insomnia"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 17:04:00
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "Bring The Family Back"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 25:44:00
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "Salva Mea"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 30:50:00
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Dirty Old Man"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 38:24:00
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "God Is A DJ"
    PERFORMER "Faithless"
    INDEX 01 42:35:00

Save the file with a .cue extension into the same directory as the original audio file.

[edit] Uses

  • Play on Windows PC
    • Winamp with
      • CUE Player Plug-In (in_cue.dll). Winamp 5.3 only works with v0.56.
      • mp3cue Plugin (gen_mp3cue.dll)
    • 1by1 MP3 player with many features, including reading cue files.
    • MPlayer can read .cue files with cue:// type URL (with bug: mplayer can't open any cuesheet not having FILE as the first line)
    • foobar2000 has native support for cue sheets.
  • Play on CD by burning image
  • Play with .cue-compatible media players
    • foobar2000
      • By using foobar2000's Converter plugin, CUE files can be split into individual files of any format. This is handy for those with whole albums in lossless formats which come with cue sheets.
    • Amarok
    • FLAC can embed a whole cuesheet into metadata block of flac audio files
    • Xbox Media Center
  • Play on portable media players

[edit] See also

  • mp3splt Open Source mp3 and ogg splitter

[edit] External links

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