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Author Topic: flac files with cue  (Read 1423 times)

sdcoochie8

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flac files with cue
« on: January 13, 2007, 04:48:45 pm »
When I import the cue file of flac encoded music, media center 12 always reports the wrong size. For example I have an album that has a total flac file size of around 300mb when I import it into media center it reports it as 3gb. I'm not quite sure why this is happening can anybody comment on this or perhaps I am doing something wrong with cue files.
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Alex B

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #1 on: January 13, 2007, 05:31:28 pm »
It happens because each virtual track sees the source file (and it's size) separately. So if the source file is 300 MB and the cue file contains 10 tracks the status line shows the combined size (10 x 300 MB). You can try this by selecting individual cue tracks.

It would be impossible to show separate track sizes because no such disk files exist.

Perhaps MC could ignore multiple instances of the same source file. It could always show the same file size when one or more cue tracks that point to the same master file are selected.

EDIT

I just realized that this behavior has changed in MC12. MC11.1 displays the size of the cue file (something like 2 or 3 kB) instead of the audio source file. Also, my old cue tracks that were imported to an MC11.1 library show these small sizes after the library has been restored in MC12.

The MC11.1 approach is better because it does not multiply the album size. I have imported the source files separately so the combined size is approximately correct in my MC11.1 library.
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sdcoochie8

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #2 on: January 14, 2007, 08:37:19 am »
Thanks Alex B that does explain things. It's not really a big deal but I was curious if I send them to burn on an audio CD if it would come up with a not large enough disc capacity error. This of course would be a bit of a problem. I have not yet tried this myself because most of my music stays on the computer or gets backed up as data files anyway unless I am making complilations.
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Alex B

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #3 on: January 14, 2007, 09:33:11 am »
Quote from: sdcoochie8 on January 14, 2007, 08:37:19 am
... if I send them to burn on ...

Burning from cue files does not work (currently?). You need to use some other program for burning.

Personally I have archived my lossless disc image files in Monkey's Audio + CUE + APLs format. APL has better support than CUE in MC. For example, burning and file conversions work properly.

(APL = Monkey's Audio Link file. Each APL file contains the playback range info and complete tagging of one individual track. The Monkey's Audio program package includes a tool for creating APL files.)

Unfortunately these APL files can be created only from CUE files that point to APE source files. It would be nice if APL files could be used with other compression formats too.

EDIT

Quote
... an audio CD if it would come up with a not large enough disc capacity error. ...

In any case, the size of the compressed source file does not matter when an audio CD is burned. After decompression the bitrate is always constant - 1411 kbps. A typical 700 MB CD-R(W) disc can contain 80 minutes of audio.
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hit_ny

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2007, 03:07:15 am »
Quote from: Alex B on January 13, 2007, 05:31:28 pm
EDIT

I just realized that this behavior has changed in MC12. MC11.1 displays the size of the cue file (something like 2 or 3 kB) instead of the audio source file. Also, my old cue tracks that were imported to an MC11.1 library show these small sizes after the library has been restored in MC12.

The MC11.1 approach is better because it does not multiply the album size. I have imported the source files separately so the combined size is approximately correct in my MC11.1 library.
Correct, i'm not sure if its a bug or an oversight. Album size now gets multiplied by the original file times number of cue items in MC12. Not so good..

The previous version showed the size of the cue items in kbs, not so great either.

I was wondering whether it was possible to calculate the exact file size of a cue track instead during AA. So unless you do AA, then it would show cue item file sizes in kB (like in MC 11).

It's possible to get BPM & volume levelling for cue items etc, so the track extent is clearly known as it goes through the entire cue track.
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scthom

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2007, 08:47:30 am »
FYI.  I am following along to see if there is anything I can do from inside the plugin.  I've tried to facilitate cue files within flacs, but mostly I think they're not well supported inside MC.  Or at least not well documented.
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benn600

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #6 on: January 19, 2007, 11:11:00 am »
The same reporting occurs with DVD VIDEO_TS folders.  The reported size is only KB's.  When I view all my DVD files, the total is in the MB's when it really amounts to 2,000,000,000 KB (2 Terabytes).
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Alex B

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Re: flac files with cue
« Reply #7 on: January 29, 2007, 03:41:29 am »
Quote from: Alex B on January 13, 2007, 05:31:28 pm
It happens because each virtual track sees the source file (and it's size) separately. So if the source file is 300 MB and the cue file contains 10 tracks the status line shows the combined size (10 x 300 MB). You can try this by selecting individual cue tracks.

It would be impossible to show separate track sizes because no such disk files exist.

Perhaps MC could ignore multiple instances of the same source file. It could always show the same file size when one or more cue tracks that point to the same master file are selected.

EDIT

I just realized that this behavior has changed in MC12. MC11.1 displays the size of the cue file (something like 2 or 3 kB) instead of the audio source file. Also, my old cue tracks that were imported to an MC11.1 library show these small sizes after the library has been restored in MC12.

The MC11.1 approach is better because it does not multiply the album size. I have imported the source files separately so the combined size is approximately correct in my MC11.1 library.

Bump

This appears to be a real show stopper to me.

With MC11.1 I created an mpl playlist of the files that are tagged to be related with my cue albums.

This playlist contains 3831 file entries: 3205 virtual cue tracks, 207 audio source files (so I also have 207 physical cue files on the disk), 419 other files (image & document files that are related to these cue albums)

MC11.1 reports: 3831 files (22.4 GB - 20.7 Days)

After loading this mpl playlist into Playing Now in MC12 it reports this:
3831 Files (361.1 GB - 20.7 Days)

Please fix the size reporting as it was in MC11.1.


There are two other issues with MC12's importer. It cannot import the document files from this mpl playlist. If the mpl file is dragged into Playing Now the documents (mostly txt) appear in PN, but they will not import if the mpl file is imported directly without using PN. I verified this with another mpl file that contained only various document file types (txt, doc, pdf, htm, mht, xls etc). Also, the importer does not preserve the original import dates from the mpl file.

The documents issue is clearly a bug.

The import date issue can be debated. You could say that the files were not previously imported in this particular library. However, it would be nice to be able to preserve the original import date. Also the playcounts and last played dates are carried over and the original import date would provide useful information. I see the mpl system as a way to merge data from separate libraries. All previous information should be preserved if possible.

EDIT

These issues are not related to FLAC plugins. I posted here because the previous discussion is in this thread.
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