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[lalittle]

I just ripped a CD to a "single file with cue" (mp3) and I'm confused by the results.

First, it lost all the tagging I did on the CD other than the "Name" of the CD, which got carried over to the "Name" field for the single track.  All the other fields that I filled in for the CD -- Genre, Artist, Album, Date, Disc Number, and Art/Image -- are blank on the resulting file.  Is this a bug?  I assume that I can tag it again, but why didn't the information I used on the CD get carried over to the resulting file like it does with "normal" rips?  Am I seeing a bug here?

Second, I simply ended up with a single, big file and no "track" info at all.  In other words, it's as if the CD I ripped contained a single track (it actually contains 23 tracks.)

I feel like I must be missing something here.  How is the "Cue" file being used?  I "thought" that I'd end up being able to hit "next" and "previous" to navigate to the track points, but I simply jump to the beginning/end of the entire hour long rip.  I also thought that I'd somehow be able to see the individual track info, but once again, I just see a single "name" for the entire thing, and I can't see any behavior that indicates that the cue file is being utilized in any way.

Again, is there a bug with this, or am I just completely misunderstanding how the "single file with cue" is supposed to work.

Lastly, in the "Ripping Options" I have "Analyze audio during rip" checked, but the tag window says "Audio not analyzed" in the "Format" field.  My normal rips always get analyzed, so I'm not sure what's happenning here.  Is this a "trait" of ripping to single file with cue, or, once again, is there a bug with this?

Thanks for any help/feedback with this,

Larry

[Alex B]

The track details are in the cue file. MC can read and import the track data from it. The MP3 file is used only as a linked container for the audio data. Naturally you can import the MP3 file separately to the library and tag it it manually, but it can't contain any track details.

I usually just drag the cue file to Playing Now and right-click import track data from there.

You can analyze the cue tracks after ripping, but this info is stored only in the library.

[lalittle]

The track details are in the cue file. MC can read and import the track data from it. The MP3 file is used only as a linked container for the audio data. Naturally you can import the MP3 file separately to the library and tag it it manually, but it can't contain any track details.

I usually just drag the cue file to Playing Now and right click import track data from there.

Forgive me, but I'm still REALLY confused here.

After the rip, I ended up with a single file imported into MC -- the single mp3 of the entire CD.  I didn't "import it separately" -- I just did the rip and this mp3 showed up at the very top of my "audio" tree (it's completely untagged with any artist or album data, so it shows at the top of the list.)  It has a blue note icon, so it's imported.  How do I proceed?  I'm unclear what I'm supposed to "do" in order to utilize the "cue file" in MC.  I don't see the artist or the album in my regular audio list, so nothing else appears to have been imported -- just the single mp3.

Sorry if I'm being a bit dense here -- it's just not making sense to me at this point.  Could you possibly give me a rudimentary set of steps that I'm supposed to do at this point?  I don't understand why it's not more obvious -- i.e. why the "cue tracks" don't show up in the library.

Thanks for clarification on this,

Larry

[Alex B]

Forgive me, but I'm still REALLY confused here.

After the rip, I ended up with a single file imported into MC -- the single mp3 of the entire CD.  I didn't "import it separately" -- I just did the rip and this mp3 showed up at the very top of my "audio" tree (it's completely untagged with any artist or album data, so it shows at the top of the list.)  It has a blue note icon, so it's imported.

Most likely the auto-importer imported the ripped MP3 file. When auto-import is disabled MC doesn't import the MP3 file or the "virtual" cue tracks automatically during ripping (in the single file + cue mode).

How do I proceed?  I'm unclear what I'm supposed to "do" in order to utilize the "cue file" in MC.  I don't see the artist or the album in my regular audio list, so nothing else appears to have been imported -- just the single mp3.

As I said, this is one of the options:
"I usually just drag the cue file to Playing Now and right-click import track data from there."

Alternatively you can enable the cue file type in the folder specific Auto-Import options. The third option is to browse to the folder in the Drives & Devices tree branch and right-click import the cue file. Probably you can also right-click import the cue file from Windows Explorer if you have MC's shell integration enabled (I have not tested this recently).

If you want to listen to the tracks without importing you can just drag the cue file to PN or use the "play" right-click shell command (you need to have the "Automatically import files into media library" option disabled in Options > General > Importing & Tagging).

Sorry if I'm being a bit dense here -- it's just not making sense to me at this point.  Could you possibly give me a rudimentary set of steps that I'm supposed to do at this point?  I don't understand why it's not more obvious -- i.e. why the "cue tracks" don't show up in the library.

Thanks for clarification on this,

Larry

This wiki page has some general info about the cue sheet system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)

[lalittle]

Thanks for all your help with this Alex -- I really appreciate it since I am still unable to get this to work.  Here are the detailed responses to your comments:

Most likely the auto-importer imported the ripped MP3 file. When auto-import is disabled MC doesn't import the MP3 file or the "virtual" cue tracks automatically during ripping (in the single file + cue mode).

I do have the Auto-Importer on, and it is set to include CUE files.  This of course explains why the big mp3 is imported -- i.e. the auto-importer sees it and imports it.

As I said, this is one of the options:
"I usually just drag the cue file to Playing Now and right-click import track data from there."

This isn't working.  When I try this by navigating to the cue file via "Drives and Devices" and drag it to PN, I get an MC message saying "The selected files can not be played" and the file is not added to Playing Now.  I get the same message when I try to play it via the right click menu, or by double clicking it.  I can't find any right-click option to "Import Track Data."  Where is this option supposed to be?

Alternatively you can enable the cue file type in the folder specific Auto-Import options.

The "CUE" file type is already enabled in the Auto-import options.  Note that the cue file DOES show up under the "Recently Ripped" playlist, but NOT under "Recently Imported."  If I look at my View Scheme that shows EVERY file in the library, I can see the cue file, but it doesn't show up under the "Audio" tree, and nothing I do will "play" it.

The third option is to browse to the folder in the Drives & Devices tree branch and right-click import the cue file. Probably you can also right-click import the cue file from Windows Explorer if you have MC's shell integration enabled (I have not tested this recently).

Neither of these actions changes anything.  The cue file is apparently "imported" into the library (i.e. it shows up in my "All Files" list in MC), but I can't get it to show up in the "audio" library, and I cannot get the file to "Play" no matter what I do.

If you want to listen to the tracks without importing you can just drag the cue file to PN or use the "play" right-click shell command (you need to have the "Automatically import files into media library" option disabled in Options > General > Importing & Tagging).

Again, this doesn't work.  I just keep getting the "The selected file cannot be played" message in MC, and the file is not added to PN.

This wiki page has some general info about the cue sheet system: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)

I read over that page, but it didn't help with the specific problems I'm having.  It DID confirm that I was correct in my general impressions of the way cue files are designed to work -- this just isn't happening in MC.

Note that I created a NEW library on a completely different system and I get the exact same behavior there -- "The selected file can not be played."  I'm really starting to wonder there is currently a bug with cue file support in MC since I'm just not seeing the behavior that you're describing.

Based on the information I've posted about the behavior I'm seeing, does it seem like I'm still missing something?  I feel like I'm going crazy here -- it seems like it "should" be working.

Thanks again for any help with this,

Larry

[lalittle]

Progress!

I found some information on a similar situaiton to this in a post from earlier this year.  Based on this post, I opened the CUE file and noticed that the "FILE" line in the Cue file did NOT have the ".mp3" extension on it.  I added the ".mp3" to the end of this line and the file now plays in MC, and shows up in under the "Audio" tree.  Some of the tags were missing, such as the Disc #, Date, and Album art, but it does play now.

Based on this, it appears that there is indeed a bug in MC where it did not name the "FILE" line correctly -- i.e. it left off the ".mp3".

My question at this point is how this will show up on an iPod.  Will it transfer to the iPod as a single file, or as a bunch of separate files?  The whole point of my doing this was to end up with a single file on the iPod that I could bookmark (it's an audiobook CD), so hopefully this will work.  If not, do I have to use the big mp3 file instead?

Thanks again,

Larry

[Higginz]

I did the copy from CD to a single file .mp3 + cue today.
After the rip was done I was only finding a single file mp3 in the MC library.
I was hoping that it would display all tracks separated? + all the tag info intact.
However, I removed the "leftovers" from the MC library, then dragged and dropped
the .cue file from the folder into Playing Now. THEN it worked
The tags were all intact exept the GENRE and YEAR tags had been removed.
I usually don't rip my CD's this way, but if I should do it, I would like to see these
things to be a reality:

1. After the CD ripping has finished - display the tracks separated + tags intact. (Like a normal CD rip)

2. Display the song tags + album cover in the Playing now track info window (Now it only shows ARTIST - ALBUM)

3. To have the ReplayGain automatically calculated during the rip. (Now it isn't)

4. Working track submissions to Last.fm (It doesn't seem to work when doing it this way).

I may have missed some settings that would correct some of the above things.
I'm sorry in advance if that is the case.

[hit_ny]

My question at this point is how this will show up on an iPod.  Will it transfer to the iPod as a single file, or as a bunch of separate files?  The whole point of my doing this was to end up with a single file on the iPod that I could bookmark (it's an audiobook CD), so hopefully this will work.  If not, do I have to use the big mp3 file instead?

Heh, yeah if the iPod could read CUE files then i'd lose my last reason for not getting one

..no luck from those rockbox ppl either, the request has been pending since 2002 (!)