How to break 1 single large audio file into smaller files

[Digital_J]

I have a WAV file that I processed through Imgburn to create a CUE file and then wrote it as CDA data to a disc that can play in my old school car CD player. Unfortunately it's about as good as a cassette tape. You have to fast forward through songs you don't want to hear. I checked the gaps option but unlike the last CD I made for my car the tracks weren't broken up automatically. So I started looking around for something that can cut up a large audio file into smaller ones. The first s/w I found was called Medieval CUE Splitter. It looked like that was going to be what I needed until I could find no way to split things only save it as a new CUE file in the same folder. The second software I found was Daemon tools ultra and then lastly CUEtools. In each s/w I'm lost as hell. All I need is a grid referencing the source audio and then some start and stop time inputs (indexing)to define each track. Why is is this so damn hard?

Edited April 4, 2020 by Digital_J

[LIGHTNING UK!]

This is not something ImgBurn can help you with.... but those other CUE tools you mentioned might work?

You don't need to split the actual WAV file, if the CUE has tracks defined in it, they'll reference different parts of the file and your disc will come out with multiple tracks rather than just 1.

CUE files are actually quite basic, you can edit them in notepad and insert tracks based on rough timings as you fast forward through the file in media player or whatever.

[Digital_J]

Is there such thing as a template for a CUE file so I can just write it in wordpad?

I had the basic outline by looking at the CUE file generated by Imgburn so I then started adding index points. Imgburn accepted the file but did not heed any of the indexes I added and so I produced a second CD with just 1 big file on it. Which is to say I must of not gotten the syntax correct with the CUE file layout. This is the current CUE file. Everything after index 01, I added in. 

Quote

TITLE "MTV Unplugged"
PERFORMER "Live"
FILE "Live-MTVunplugged.wav" WAVE
REM FILE-DECODED-SIZE 43:00:59
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    PREGAP 00:00:02
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
    INDEX 02 00:04:08
    INDEX 03 00:07:55
    INDEX 04 00:12:38
    INDEX 05 00:18:06
    INDEX 06 00:22:36
    INDEX 07 00:28:03
    INDEX 08 00:31:31
    INDEX 09 00:37:04

 

[ianymaty]

See here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)

[Digital_J]

Well, it only took 2 days but I tracked down a wiki for kodi and adjusted my format accordingly. I'm happy to say, not only was I able to break the file into tracks (indexes) I was able to add titles for the songs as well. Here's the final format for other lost frustrated souls that want to accomplish the same task. On a side note, any idea why i have to keep resetting my password to log back in? My browser saves the exact info I use, however when I go to re-log in the site never accepts the info and I end up resetting things again =\

Regardless, Lightning UK thanks for the inspiration to DIY this. It's not often where you can say to yourself "not getting the results that you want from what's out there? Make it yourself then"

Quote

TITLE "MTV Unplugged"
PERFORMER "Live"
FILE "Live-MTVunplugged.wav" WAVE
REM FILE-DECODED-SIZE 43:00:59
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Operation Spirit"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Selling the Drama"
    INDEX 00 04:08:00
    INDEX 01 04:08:01
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "All Over You"
    INDEX 00 07:55:00
    INDEX 01 07:55:01
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Beauty of Gray"
    INDEX 00 12:38:00
    INDEX 01 12:38:01
  TRACK 05 AUDIO
    TITLE "T.B.D."
    INDEX 00 18:06:00
    INDEX 01 18:06:01
  TRACK 06 AUDIO
    TITLE "I Alone"
    INDEX 00 22:36:00
    INDEX 01 22:36:01
  TRACK 07 AUDIO
    TITLE "Supernatural"
    INDEX 00 28:03:00
    INDEX 01 28:03:01
  TRACK 08 AUDIO
    TITLE "Lightning Crashes"
    INDEX 00 31:31:00
    INDEX 01 31:31:01
  TRACK 09 AUDIO
    TITLE "White, discussion"
    INDEX 00 37:04:00
    INDEX 01 37:04:01

 

[LIGHTNING UK!]

You can do without the INDEX 00 entries, there's no point in them being there.

INDEX 01 is what players jump to when you skip tracks etc. Plus you'd only made the index 00 1 frame long... which is 1/75th of a second!

Well done for figuring it all out though.

No idea about the browser thing. Remove the password from your saved password list and try again.

 

[Digital_J]

Yeah, I noticed the difference with the INDEX command when ianymaty left a Wikipedia link. As for the short time between tracks, it was done on purpose due to it being a live session with an audience. I wanted it to flow the same as the live show, yet give me the ability to jump between songs. On my computer I can barely hear the difference. In my car I can't hear a difference, I actually studied this as it went from 1 track to the next and still couldn't hear the break point.

Also if it helps someone else to do this, I never mentioned from my post above how I got the basic info for the CUE file when I've never written one before -maybe?. True enough the same Kodi page had examples. But my starting info was actually generated via Imgburn when I made my referenced single file into a CUE file in Imgburn thinking it was going to do all the work for me with separating the tracks. I later pulled up this generated CUE file in Word Pad (@Lightning UK!'s suggestion)and tried to figure out what was missing by looking at the Kodi CUE example page. There is strangely not allot of how-to's for this info on the web, but I knew if I could just get some example versions I could write-in what I was missing myself.

I guess I might find it interesting to experiment some more to see if the "INDEX 00" to "INDEX 01" points of bigger deviations would have the same effect as the "PREGAP" command if I wanted to write-up a CUE sheet  of a studio album that has traditional silences between tracks but was saved as 1 continuous track/single large audio file.

Unfortunately even though my car stereo has the ability to decode data over the airwaves aka HD radio. In CD mode it was unable to read the metadata that I put in for the track titles. It would of been nice to have that, but now that I think about it I've never seen info come up from store bought CDs either. The info populated in Foobar however so I know it's doing what it was programed to.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Digital_J

[LIGHTNING UK!]

Your INDEX 00 markers do not leave a short time between tracks. That's the point I was making

The TRACK commands give you the ability to skip (tracks). You can't do anything with indexes at all - as in, you can't jump between them. They're invisible to software / hardware players.

The table of contents on the disc only records where track x / index 01 is and that's considered the start of a track if you skip through them. So really, INDEX 00 of a track actually looks like it belongs to the previous one.

The PREGAP command instructs the program to insert digital silence between tracks (that data is not taken from the file).... so if you had a single large file with digital silence in it between tracks, that's where you might choose to use INDEX 00 (for when it starts) and then INDEX 01 for when the music starts again. INDEX's consume data from the file.