Lossless audio files splitting

Install required tools

$ sudo pacman -S mac flac wavpack cuetools shntool

Splitting

We’ll use shnsplit to split audio files. Fire up the command with -h (--help) option to get more detail on usage. For those who don’t wanna type the --help yourself, I’ve copy&paste for you at the bottom of this post.

Syntax

The syntax to call the tool would be formed as following:

$ shnsplit -f <the-cue-file> -t %n-%t -D -H -o <output-format> -- \
  <the-lossless-audio-files>

• -f: specific the cue file (look for breakpoints).
• -t: specific the output files name format:
  • %n: means the track number.
  • %t: means the track title.
• -D: print out the debugging information (useful for diagnostic if the process get fail).
• -H: times format in h:mm:ss.
• -o: (must) specific the output format, flac or wav (default - no good, man).
• --: indicates that the command’s options was over, the rest is files’ name to convert.

Warning:

If your cue file comes from Windows, it should contains the CRLF EOL marks/terminators, this leads to error when call the tools.

$ file "The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue"
The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue: UTF-8 Unicode (with BOM) text, with CRLF line
terminators

$ cuebreakpoints "The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue"
bad character '�'
bad character '�'
bad character '�'
96: syntax error
cuebreakpoints: error: unable to parse input file `The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue'

• How to fix: Convert the file from Windows format to Unix format, as below tweak. You can get this by using dos2unix, vim, sed, awk, whatever.

$ dos2unix <the-cue-file>

$ dos2unix "The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue"
dos2unix: converting file The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue to Unix format...

$ file "The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue"
The Oriental Angels - Rouge Hot II.cue: UTF-8 Unicode text

Example on splitting files

$ shnsplit -f Zhou\ Zifeng\ -\ Guitar\ -\ Hotel\ California.cue \
  -t %n-%t -D -H -o flac -- Zhou\ Zifeng\ -\ Hotel\ California.ape

# Or, less eyes-hurt looking

$ shnsplit -f "Zhou Zifeng - Guitar - Hotel California.cue" \
  -t %n-%t -D -H -o flac -- "Zhou Zifeng - Hotel California.ape"

• If your shell is zsh, you should complete the command above in two blinks of eyes. Type the shnsplit, press the <Space> then -f, input "cue then press the <Tab>, and so on. (Auto completion all the things!!)

Metadata

shnsplit does not fill metadata to files for you. You have to do it yourself. Don’t worry! Those kindness Linux-guys have done things for you!

The cuetools comes with cuetag.sh script. This script is placed in your $PATH when tools is installing.

At time of writing, this script just works great, you call it, and tada, life is so good. Of course, you can take a look yourself to make sure things work as expected. The script should contain the following line, if not, fix it (FLAC tagging):

$ $EDITOR `which cuetag.sh`

# OUTDATED

METAFLAC="metaflac --remove-vc-all --import-vc-from=-"

# UPDATED

# FLAC tagging
METAFLAC="metaflac --remove-all-tags --import-tags-from=-"

Example on writing tags to files

$ cuetag.sh <the-cue-file> <audio-files>

$ /usr/bin/cuetag.sh "Zhou Zifeng - Guitar - Hotel California.cue" [0-9]*.flac

Playlist

We have to re-create play list file for new created files, the cue is no longer valid to player.

$ for aufile in *.flac
do
echo "$aufile" >> "`basename *.cue cue`m3u"
done

This line

`basename *.cue cue`m3u

means the new one will be the same name as the cue file except its extension, and MIME, of course.

Real life operation

Splitting

• I have a folder which contains multiple files, and the cue file indecates that there are total 13 tracks in this album (the wav file).

• There’s a small problem. Those TITLE instructions’ value in the cue show that tracks’ title currently included the tracks’ number. We have to remove the track number from title names first, unless you wanna end up with something like this: 01-01-blah-blah.flac. No good.

• It looks better now. And ready to split the wav file.

• OK. Let’s fire the shnsplit up.

Tagging

• The wav has been splitted to flac files, and these flac files do not contain any metadata yet. The player shows empty tags.

• You can fill tags to those new created files manually, but I don’t think it is a good idea.

• Now, it’s time for cuetag.sh turn, let’s:

$ cuetag.sh *.cue [0-9]*.flac

• Here is what we get. So nice. Re-create the play list file, and enjoy.

Help

$ shnsplit -h

Usage: shnsplit [OPTIONS] [file]

Mode-specific options:

  -c num  start counting from num when naming output files (default is 1)
  -e len  prefix each track with len amount of lead-in from previous track (*)
  -f file read split point data from file
  -h      show this help screen
  -l len  split input file into files of length len (*)
  -m str  specify character manipulation string (alternating from/to)
  -n fmt  specify file count output format (default is %02d -- 01, 02, 03, ...)
  -t fmt  name output files in user-specified format based on CUE sheet fields.
          (%p = performer, %a = album, %t = track title, %n = track number)
  -u len  postfix each track with len amount of lead-out from next track (*)
  -x list only extract tracks in list (comma-separated, may contain ranges)

          (*) len must be in bytes, m:ss, m:ss.ff or m:ss.nnn format

If no split point file is given, then split points are read from the terminal.

Global options:

  -D      print debugging information (each one increases debugging level)
  -F file get input filenames from file, instead of command line or terminal
  -H      print times in h:mm:ss.{ff,nnn} format, instead of m:ss.{ff,nnn}
  -O val  overwrite existing files?  val is: {[ask], always, never}
  -P type progress indicator type.  type is: {[pct], dot, spin, face, none}
  -a str  prefix 'str' to base part of output filenames
  -d dir  specify output directory
  -i fmt  specify input file format decoder and/or arguments.
          format is:  "fmt decoder [arg1 ... argN (%f = filename)]"
  -o fmt  specify output file format, extension, encoder and/or arguments.
          format is:  "fmt [ext=abc] [encoder [arg1 ... argN (%f = filename)]]"
  -q      suppress non-critical output (quiet mode)
  -r val  reorder input files?  val is: {ask, ascii, [natural], none}
  -v      show version information
  -w      suppress warnings
  -z str  postfix 'str' to base part of output filenames
  --      indicates that everything following it is a filename

Source: http://en.linuxreviews.org/HOWTO_splitt_lossless_audio_files_(ape,flac,_wv,_wav)_using.cue_files