M3U Playlist converter

[PCPete]

G'day all,

 

I've just written a small M3U to CUE file converter.

 

It takes an M3U playlist file and converts the track list to the ImgBurn .cue format.

 

It seems to work on most of my M3U playlists (using MMJB), but it's a quick and dirty converter, so I don't currently check for things like unterminated quotes, quoted strings, and so on.

 

I've tested it with Greek and Cyrillic (UNICODE) tracks, and it seems to work.

 

If anyone is interested, I'll be happy to make it available as a free tool. Currently, I've done it as a command-line tool and as a simple windows UI that should run on almost any windows platform out there (I've tested it on XP Pro 32 (SP1 & SP2), Win98, and WinXP x64, but more testing might be needed).

 

And if there's enough demand, I'd be willing to do some fixin's (things like additional input file formats, track re-ordering, gap specifiers, illegal char mapping, adding individual tracks, etc).

 

Here's the obligatory (but probably not that useful) screenshot:

 

Feel free to ignore this if you're not interested!

 

You can contact me via the website or PM if you're interested, or if you have a file format or output you'd like to see added.

Cheers,

PCPete

[PCPete]

G'day all,

 

Thanks to some great suggestions (and help!) from Wilfried, I've finally updated the cue list converter tool, and it's a bit more usable. Here's what's possible now:

 

- tracks can be added from a simple file dialog (multiple files are supported), and/or existing cue lists, and/or existing M3U lists

- tracks can be added in any order, and multiple files and cue/m3u lists can be appended in any order

- most typical CUE lists can be imported, and if artist, title, and track information is unable to be found from the track name, the CUE fields will be used instead.

- track information can now be parsed during the import using templates you can add yourself and edit.

- It supports ALBUM ARTIST, ALBUM TITLE, TRACK ARTIST, TRACK TITLE, and TRACK INDEX templates.

- It can export the list to M3U or CUE list formats.

- The CUE export also allows PERFORMER and TITLE fields for the album and for individual tracks.

- You can move tracks around in any order, then auto-renumber the track indices as a batch before exporting to CUE or M3U

- You can edit individual entries and fields

- A template manager has also been added (see screenshots below)

- The template can be applied during the file or list import, or individual templates can be applied to individual track entries in the list after the list is added to

- you can also specify only a folder part to the template, or only a file part

 

- I've tried to add lots of little "nice to use" features, like

- automagic template buttons so you don't have to type the template if you don't want to. You can just click buttons.

- autonaming the output list filename with an editable prefix

- remembers last folders opened for cue, m3u, and files separately

- remembers last output folders for cue and m3u separately

- remembers last template used and whether to apply the template as the files are added

 

And of course, unicode and international character sets are supported (but if your NLS settings don't work, let me know).

 

The program looks like:

 

And the template editor :

 

Please note: I developed and use this tool for my business, which involves creating and managing archivable (non-lossy) audio format files from damaged or broken recordings, so I haven't added any IDV3 tag features, and most lossy output file formats aren't specifically supported in the CUE export, so if you'd like to see a particular format properly supported in the CUE output, let me know and I'll add it.

 

You can contact me via the website or PM if you're interested, or if you have a file format or output you'd like to see added.

 

This is a work-in-progress, so if anyone does find something missing, please let me know!

 

I'll try and find a secure hosting option if enough people are interested.

 

Cheers,

PCPete

Edited October 31, 2008 by PCPete

[dontasciime]

found your tool last time this time it hides LOL

[PCPete]

The latest build (92) can be downloaded from my website.

 

The URL is : http://www.audiography.com.au/images/MusicList_B92.zip

 

It doesn't yet support relative cue tracks (where one humungous source file contains multiple track segments within that file), but you can import multiple simple cue lists and/or m3us and/or individual files.

 

Please reply to this thread if you're experiencing difficulties figuring out how to add or edit templates so other potential users can benefit...

 

Hope this helps a bit.

 

-PCPete

[dontasciime]

Thanks

[PCPete]

OK, I think I've sorted out the multipart CUE sheet reads.

 

The new build is available on the website, the link (from my website's base URL) is /images/MusicList_B98.zip

 

It should now be possible to mix multiple multipart CUE file tracks in any order (and include M3U and single files as usual) in an output CUE.

 

This will work with properly formatted multipart CUEs without parsing being enabled. You can still leave the parse function on, but in the case where no reasonable track title/artist name/album title/album name/track number can be parsed, the data will be taken from the input CUE.

 

You will need to leave parsing turned on for M3U and single file imports, as there is no possible way to get metadata out of these files without me writing yet another IDV3 parser, and since I only work with WAV files, my parse tools only work with WAV/BWF files, since I have no interest in MP3 or M4A or OGG or FLAC or APE or WMA or any other kind of compressed file format. If I had the time to learn how to parse those tracks I would, but the tools available for my development environment are bug-ridden guessfests with no error checking or ability to handle nonstandard metadata tags. So that will be a job for someone smarter than me.

 

Here's a look at the latest track information panel:

 

The context menu for the grid display is largely self-explanatory.

 

All fields are editable, so if you mix badly-formed input files (files with no absolute path), you'll get badly-formed output files unless you manually edit the path for each track. The parser will take the guesswork out of that, so if your template is correctly set up, you should be able to produce valid output files with a minimum of editing. Based on the example files users have already sent, this is the one biggest problem - CUE and M3Us created with one music tool using relative paths won't work at all with other music tools unless they also have the same relative path information. Without that, they just plain vanilla won't work as expected. That's expected. So the answer is, as always, SPECIFY FULL PATHS and you'll never get lost.

 

And don't forget - once you've done the editing and saved the output CUE, you can then use that as the basis for other CUE mixes!

 

Finally, since there appears to be no way to specify relative track offsets in the M3U format, M3U exports just plain don't work with multipart CUE files, and the reason is : they can't work. That's why you should never, ever, combine any tracks (related or unrelated) in a single audio file! Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD. But I doubt I'll make any difference bleating on about this state of affairs, so I won't.

 

To reorder tracks, you need to drag the LEFTMOST column (the grey 3D column) up and down, like in Access or most other grid-based editors. I've tried to add functionality to the standard windows grid control to allow more human-friendly editing, but that's not going to happen, so just treat the control like any other standard windows control and you'll be fine.

 

If you have any questions, or if you find CUE sheets that choke the code, by all means let me know! And I haven't tested the output CUE if you delete some partial tracks from a split or multitrack CUE listing, so if you find there are problems, please let me know!

 

 

Cheers,

PCPete

Edited November 8, 2008 by PCPete

[PCPete]

There's a new build available, use the same download URL but the filename is now MusicList_B100.zip

 

The main change is that I've added support for default filetypes and positional information for CUE list output regardless of where the tracks were added from - so now M3U (and bunches of random tracks) will now work properly with ImgBurn even if a CUE list isn't used to import the tracks from.

 

This is a bug, and thanks to all who reported it! I grew up on a farm, and one of the first lessons I learned was to always close the ****** gate. This time, I forgot to close the ***** gate. Sigh.

 

I hope this makes the tool a bit more usable.