[RESOLVED] .cue file format

[penagate]

If I have say a large mp3 file, and I know where I want to put the track positions, how can I put that information into a .cue file? I've looked for tools but not really found much, and nothing really on the format specification.

Cheers,

[plenderj]

I don't think that's what cue files are for...

[penagate]

Well, I thought they were for marking the track positions on CDs. When I mix songs together it outputs as one big mp3 and I was hoping to be able to use a .cue file to mark the track positions for when I burn it to a CD, otherwise it comes out as one long track.

[plenderj]

Nope as far as I'm aware .cue files are for use with ISOs and things like that.
Use some application to split up the mp3....

.... by the way do you like DJ Tiesto?

[penagate]

According to some pages on the net I read, .cue files are used with .bin files when burning CDs. The cue file contains the tracking data and the bin file contains the data to be burnt. There are also programs which will split mp3s using cue files which mark the track positions. That's why I thought of just making a cue file for burning the track information, to save having to split the mp3 first.

I have a couple of DJ Tiesto mixes and they are good.

[plenderj]

Yeah .cue files are when you have a .ISO (or any cd image) - but not mp3....

Do you like his mix Traffic?

[penagate]

I haven't heard that one, will look for it...

[Cander]

Yes .cue files can be used to specify track positions. But its just not used much anymore. You see back in the day of early multimedia discs, all music was on a cd like a standard music cd and 1 track would be where all the other media would reside. So those CD's were ripped to bin cue and mp3 or wave. The cue file had to specifiy the mp3 order and which track the other binary data resided or it just wouldnt work right or at all.

[penagate]

In case anyone stumbles upon this, it can be, and actually is quite commonly, done (although mostly with bootlegged mix CDs).

A .cue file for an mp3 looks like this:

PERFORMER "artist-name"
TITLE "album-title"
FILE "mp3-filename" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "track-01-title"
    PERFORMER "track-01-artist"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "track-02-title"
    PERFORMER "track-02-artist"
    INDEX 01 01:55:62

etc.