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Cue sheet support
When will cue sheets be supported?
Because the mp3 format does not have full support for gapless playback, cue sheets are often used when gapless playback of files in mp3 format is needed (e.g. mix cds, etc.).
Because the mp3 format does not have full support for gapless playback, cue sheets are often used when gapless playback of files in mp3 format is needed (e.g. mix cds, etc.).
I’m sad Songbird can't read my cue sheets.
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The best points from everyone
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I think it'd be great if the cuesheets would be parsed into virtual tracks which behave just like any normal track. This is the way it works in foobar2k, and I think it's the perfect way to work with cuesheets: in foobar2k, I don't know whether the album is a collection of flacs/mp3s or a big file with cuesheet, unless I check "under the hood" for the underlying file.
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I am on board with the virtual albums option. Both winamp and foobar do it this way in Windows, and it's far easier to use than the "additional info" option, which is how xmplay does it.
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OK, people. We kinda seem to agree that cue sheet support would be great. So let's get into the details and define what we want, so in the end somebody has all the information to write an addon for this.
Which formats are available? How do media players handle cue sheets? How would you expect Songbird to handle them? For example, should the tracks from the cue sheet be shown transparently as normal tracks in the library (and faceplate during playback)? Or do you prefer handling just the "main mp3", having some sort of extra display that gives you just the additional info from the cuesheet at playback time?
The latter would probably be simpler to implement, but the former might give you all the power of Songbird for every single cue sheet defined track: Last.fm scrobbling, rating, playback count etc. So I'd vote for the I-want-it-all version.
My suggestion:
Media files with cuesheets are handled as virtual albums in Songbird's database. When a virtual track from this album is double clicked, it plays just the corresponding part of the file. If a following track from the virtual album (=media file) is in the playlist, Songbird should of course just gaplessly continue playing that file.
I have no idea how simple this is to integrate into Songbird, but if it works, everything that is built on top of track/album/artist information can use the cue sheet data, too, like scrobbling, album art, mashtape and the like.
OK, tell me what you think about this. And if there's someone around who is into Songbird programming: tell me if this is just too complicated to integrate as an addon..
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?What is a "cue sheet"? Could you describe it in greater detail?
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Inappropriate?Example: one mp3 file which contains the audio ripped from a CD in a single file from beginning to end, and one cue sheet which specifies the indices of the individual tracks (where the tracks are located time-wise) in this audio file.
Splitting the CD image into separate audio files makes gapless playback often impossible to achieve (without re-encoding). While this is irrelevant for unconnected tracks, it is unacceptable when dealing with e.g. mixed albums or mix compilations.
Also cue sheets can easily be burnt to CD resulting in a perfect copy of the original disc.
Notable players that support cue sheets include Amarok and foobar2000.
For further details, please have a look at the article on Hydrogenaudio or the Wikipedia article I linked to. -
Inappropriate?yes, cue sheet support would be great. It is very important for supplying playlists for downloaded DJ sets. It enables the user to see the title of the current track and even skip, although the whole set is in one single mp3 file. Based on this, we could even scrobble those track names to last.fm or treat them as "real" single tracks. -
Inappropriate?Embedded and external Cue Sheets for flac files with the ability to display the embedded album artwork.
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this what i want. -
Inappropriate?I would also like to see cue sheet support for mp3s
greets CruX
I’m hoping that someone will implement cue sheet support
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Inappropriate?Important suggestion! Idlike to see cue sypport too!
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Inappropriate?The default for classical music collections, as well, which often (typically) are ripped as a single CD image in a lossless format with a cue sheet for navigation. Very important.
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Inappropriate?Yes, this would be a really nice feature (even though I personally don't like cue sheets) because it is a really common way for people to organize their music.
@ashughes, I can't really provide a whole lot of technical details, but basically a .cue file (Cue Sheet) is a file that describes an audio file in order to navigate to certain points within the audio stream. So you might have a concert or something ripped from cd as one file, and instead of splitting it into tracks you create a .cue file. When you play the .cue file in the player, it plays the audio file and lets you navigate by track even though it is really one big file. Hope that helps, check out Amarok or foobar2000 (as mentioned earlier) if you want an example of this functionality.
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Inappropriate?My entire music collection consist of single file flacs with cue sheets. The only player on Linux that supports viewing and navigating to the individual tracks is xmms with the mp3-cue plugin. This is beyond frustrating that xmms (not xmms2) is the only player that can do this.
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Inappropriate?OK, people. We kinda seem to agree that cue sheet support would be great. So let's get into the details and define what we want, so in the end somebody has all the information to write an addon for this.
Which formats are available? How do media players handle cue sheets? How would you expect Songbird to handle them? For example, should the tracks from the cue sheet be shown transparently as normal tracks in the library (and faceplate during playback)? Or do you prefer handling just the "main mp3", having some sort of extra display that gives you just the additional info from the cuesheet at playback time?
The latter would probably be simpler to implement, but the former might give you all the power of Songbird for every single cue sheet defined track: Last.fm scrobbling, rating, playback count etc. So I'd vote for the I-want-it-all version.
My suggestion:
Media files with cuesheets are handled as virtual albums in Songbird's database. When a virtual track from this album is double clicked, it plays just the corresponding part of the file. If a following track from the virtual album (=media file) is in the playlist, Songbird should of course just gaplessly continue playing that file.
I have no idea how simple this is to integrate into Songbird, but if it works, everything that is built on top of track/album/artist information can use the cue sheet data, too, like scrobbling, album art, mashtape and the like.
OK, tell me what you think about this. And if there's someone around who is into Songbird programming: tell me if this is just too complicated to integrate as an addon..
I’m confident
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YES, your suggestion is excellent - the absolute key is that the component bits of the master mp3 are treated essentially as individual tracks, more or less just like any other single-file mp3 etc. Winamp has several major problems in this area, the cue support is half baked IMO. This would be a HUGE plus for SB!
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Inappropriate?I am on board with the virtual albums option. Both winamp and foobar do it this way in Windows, and it's far easier to use than the "additional info" option, which is how xmplay does it.
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Inappropriate?Either display a cue file as separate song tracks or what would be really ideal would be to have the album appear with a + to the left of it which when clicked would expand to the full track list possibly slightly indented. Clicking on a song would move the play pointer to that song. Functionally it would need to work exactly the same as if it were NOT a cue sheet but the actual individual track files.
Right now playing a single file flac (w/o cue sheet obviously) results in a Lyric display ie of "Cat Stevens - Catch Bull at Four.flac null" as the plugin has no clue what songs are contained in it. Almost all the plugins currently "malfunction" like this w/o having cue support.
We would need the ability to drag individual songs from the album/cue sheet to a playlist.
Info on cue sheets: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cue_sheet_(computing)
Amarok has a horrible partial integration of cue sheets so please do not use that as an example, and cue support in audacity positively does not work on 64bit Linux. Xmms w/mp3-cue currently opens up a separate window with the song files that can be used for navigation, but it's really clunky having it separate. Of course if it was well integrated in XMMS I'd be happy and never would have bothered trying Songbird.2 Comments Add a comment
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I vote yes on the expandable track list idea. It would be really useful.
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I would suggest to treat the audio file with CUE sheet as if they were multiple files (tracks). Any other behavior would be very confusing and IMHO much more difficult to implement.
Do it exactly as foobar2000 does. Also treat Matroska files with chapters the same way. -
Inappropriate?I think it'd be great if the cuesheets would be parsed into virtual tracks which behave just like any normal track. This is the way it works in foobar2k, and I think it's the perfect way to work with cuesheets: in foobar2k, I don't know whether the album is a collection of flacs/mp3s or a big file with cuesheet, unless I check "under the hood" for the underlying file.
6 people think
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Inappropriate?I agree it would be best to treat virtual, cue sheet based tracks just as normal tracks. The idea with a "+" sign to extend the media file to its virtual tracks has one major problem: alphabetical sorting. We couldn't find the virtual tracks in the track list, because the are file under the main file's artist. Also it would mean introducing a completely new concept to the GUI, which does not seem a very good idea.
I do agree though, that it's not a bad idea to make it visible that you are dealing with a virtual track. But that could be done by giving those items a slightly different color or something.
2 people think
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Inappropriate?Question: would cue sheets provide the ability to do this:
http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t...
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Inappropriate?Cue sheet support would be really good, and automatically solves the start/stop time and seamless playback problems for CD rips.
Cue sheets include "INDEX 00 and INDEX 01" per track. "INDEX 01" tells you which part to skip to if you jump to a track. The bit between "INDEX 00 and INDEX 01" only gets played when you play tracks sequentually (and shows up as a negative time countdown when you play a CD). For many CD's this inter-track bit is silent, but not for live CD's/Mixes.
CD's have always handled this fine, play a CD and you get the inter-track stuff, but if you shuffle tracks you don't get them. I'm not aware of any player that does this stuff well yet, and this would be a great way for songbird to be ahead of the game.
Most gapless playback stuff handles it badly - you don't want this bit appended to the beginning or end of a song when you play an individual track. You want it played only when you play sequential tracks, so playback is identical to the original CD.
What would be great would be for songbird to treat tracks as individual files, but detect when songs are being played sequentially from the playlist, and therefore knows whether or not to play the inter-track bit seamlessly.
"TRACK 01 INDEX 00" hidden tracks are also an interesting case for CD's that cue sheets are the only way to support this - these often just get lost when people rip to their digital media player of choice.
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Inappropriate?Cue sheets are a MUST!! I am a big vocal trance fan - the best choonage out there consists of CD length mixes with accompanying cue file with the track listings. Cue support via plugin is one of the big plusses of winamp, which I'd be happy to dump as soon as SB pulls in a couple key features like this. Sure hope this is something we will see in 1.0.1. ;)
I’m waiting ;)
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Inappropriate?yeah absolutely need cue files too, having most of my electronic music as dj sets and also Album releases (which are often done with cue files, if mixed sets)!
right now I use amarok, but like has been said above, it's only partial integration :/
I also like the idea of virtual albums..
especially with the hope that I can finally *search* my whole collection of CUE based sets, for the single tracks :) !
over 5 years ago, I had an idea to achieve this using 'fuse' virtual filesystem on linux , and programming a plugin that would show such cue-based mp3's as virtual directories in the virtual filesystem, which could then be indexed by whatever music database or even a general desktop search like spotlight on MAC!
This is of course still interesting idea, now with a good desktop search also on Linux like Beagle, see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_... -
Inappropriate?Very, very important feature. I bet hundreds if not thousands of potential users dismiss songbird because it is lacking this essential feature. I was disappointed when I found this wasn't in the 1.0 release. I have so many entire cd rip single flac + cue files, please please please implement this asap. I'd rather have my songbird crash every three days by a random bug than not have this feature!
What it boils down to: Do it like Foobar!
I’m the alpha and the omega
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+1
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Inappropriate?Agree! for the ones of us who like electronic music .cue support would be absolutely great!
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?Only for "now playing playing" I want this feature (too copy features from "winamp Skin classic" ) -
Inappropriate?This definitely needs to be done soon, we've been waiting patiently since beta 0.5.........
You will gain a hell of a lot of users from this
I’m waiting
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Inappropriate?If SongBird can support CUE, I am sold and can try it instead of foobar2000:
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?Just chiming in to add to the chorus. I'd love to use SongBird, but all of my files are in flac+cue, so I'm sticking with Cog until this is implemented.
I’m wistful
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Inappropriate?It should also be possible to make a cue sheet addon in order to make cue sheets. Sometimes i feel like songbird is sucking apple juice too hard instead of listening to geeks.
I’m fustrated
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lol :P
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I sense a true word from your message
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Inappropriate?For me, it would be hard for any player to do everything I rely on FB2K for, the CUE sheet support is a true deal breaker. I have Linux @ work as my workstation and am presently running FB2K out of Wine, but would entertain a native player there to avoid the oddities of dealing with Wine's ability to talk to ALSA/Pulse.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Indeed. Cue sheet support is a dealbreaker for me too. Which is unfortunate because I love everything else about the program. Nothing against Foobar... just can't really get into it. Please add this feature!!!
I’m waiting patiently...
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Inappropriate?One more thing on this topic - you should be able to give individual songs in a cue sheet different ratings & play them independently in playlists etc. For all practical purposes, songs in a cue file should be just like any other track.
Tangent: would be good to have crossfader support in songbird too (so a song taken from a mix set/cue would not abrubtly start/end.)
I’m mostly happy with foobar now.
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Inappropriate?I'm curious - for the folks who don't want flac support incorporated into the main project, what's the rationale? I'm much more dubious of the video support than I am of supporting a type of music file. Is the assumption that the player will be slower or less reliable if it allows flac support?
I'm hoping that whoever implements any of these formats in code would ensure that only necessary modules would reside in memory until needed. I recognize this is the same idea as a plugin, but for me the difference is 'does it work out of the box (as it were) for all my music?' I'm afraid if Songbird can't answer in the affirmative it will lose users.
It is true that all the features included in the main product will make the download larger, but I don't see a problem with a larger download (within reason) so long as memory management is handled correctly.
So for those against this, if I've missed something, help me - why wouldn't you roll this into the code?
I’m confident this could be done well
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Inappropriate?G'day guys.
Songbird now supports gapless playback, so the main benefit of cue files seems to have been eliminated.
Personally, I used a cue splitter and split the albums I had. Had plenty of albums, but it didn't take long, and let me dump selected tracks on my ipod shuffle.
I know it doesn't fix the source of the problem, but it fixes the symptoms, and provides a solution, which is better in some cases.5 Comments Add a comment
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Benefit of CUE files can be eliminated? WTH. The benefit of CUE files is just not gapless payback. Trance DJs usually release their tracks in a singe 2 hour long MP3, or that's how they are recorded. CUE files are generated for each of these 2 hour long MP3s. Are you suggesting, now we need to split them into separate MP3s in order to play them with individual track information in Songbird?
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G'day,
Firstly, maybe I should state that I'm not a developer.. I'm part of the community. So this isn't POTI's official opinion, just mine.
Secondly, I'm just saying its a workaround for now. As I said, it fixes the symptoms, not the problem. And plenty of players/programs wont support cue's, so for optimum compatibility, its best to split them anyway
You mentioned cue files have "other benefits". And I am honestly wondering what they are, because I helped someone convert their cues to single MP3's so that they could easily put specific songs on their ipod. I honestly can't think of any advantages with using cues. You'll find there is plenty of pre-mixed music out there that is distributed as separate files.
Finally, whilst I understand the benefit of supporting cues for "convenience" of them just working, tools like cue splitter can act in bulk, and so don't take long anyway. I helped someone split plenty of albums so that they could take songs and put them on their ipod, or play them in sequence.
Just an opinion though.
But it does give me an idea.. -
I clearly stated the benefit of using CUE files other than the gapless feature, is the ability to view individual "files" in a large MP3 file. I really have no intention to modify my original MP3 files by splitting it to small MP3 files just so that Songbird can play them individually. foobar2000 does exactly what's needed with CUE files. You are able to view the large MP3 file as multiple tracks. What you are implying is to split the original MP3 file which is not the preferred option for most who suggest CUE file playback.
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Why is being able to view many Mp3's as one file a "benefit" though? Is there a benefit to having entire albums packaged as 1 file? Or is it a mental thing.. All it means is that foobar is able to view it as separate tracks, but you can't transfer seperate sections to any other devices until its split..
Its quite a simple question really. Why is having 1 file a benefit. And why should end users prefer cues when split files sound the same, and are more flexible? -
Andrew, here's what your missing. We dont want to convert our files because alot of mixes are distributed freely with the help of torrents (legal). If we convert them we'd have twice the files. This is too much of a burden, specially when where splitting flacs. MP3's just don't cut it for true audiophiles. Nice work around though, stop pushing it as an end all be all solution, song bird should already include cue support and it IS a necessity.
It's been 12 months and its not even on the to do list. I switched to WMP and winamp couple of months ago... they handle MTP marvelously and cue sheets are supported like butter. on the mac i only listen to radio with VLC. -
Inappropriate?it's not a "mental benefit" IMO, if have ever listened to long mixes you'd understand that this 1 large mp3 is 1 show, but the cuesheet helps you merely to skip to your favorite track on this show. that one of the many examples of how handy cuesheets are1 Comment Add a comment
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And yet.. If they are split, you can skip to the favourite track in your show anyway (you simply select the track number). Why couldn't you?
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Inappropriate?it's not a 1 show anymore - i.e. it's multiple tracks now1 Comment Add a comment
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1) Sort by track number.
2) Play. They play like they are a single "show" because Songbird supports gapless feedback. There is no gap between songs, and if you play them sequentially, they sound like a single MP3. You wouldn't even know they were 24 different tracks.
Like I said, have used cuesheets in the past before. Me and my friends must really be missing something, because we all stopped using cue's, and we can't tell the difference. I have a mate whose a DJ, and whilst I have never checked with him, I am sure he'd agree with me.
Either way, I proposed a solution that makes splitting convenient enough, so that it isn't even a problem to change. http://getsatisfaction.com/songbird/t... -
Inappropriate?Splitting them up is not really an option for me. With my 750GB of music of which around 350GB are one file flac + cue-rips I seriosuly can't be bothered to spend countless hours splitting them all up.
Especially since cue support can't be the hardest feature to implement..2 Comments Add a comment
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not to mention that you would have to click play gapless every time you played an album that was split up from cues. Mixes with cue files aren't mean to be played seperately. In general the cue files are just complimentary markers to skip to certain points in the mix since generally the tracks are not divided, instead they have a smooth custom transition. the songbird team is aming at the mainstream before the grab the geeks. Thats a bad way to start anything with a small budget. Digg, twitter, revision3, youtube, they all started with an elitist user base and then expanded gradually. stop trying to imitate iTunes.
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G'day,
I agree its probably not an option for you. 350GB would be a lot to do manually, and I certainly agree native support would be beneficial in your case.
I have also proposed another idea though that could work in conjunction with this one. This is to allow Songbird to automatically identify cue files on import, and split the tracks. Since most formats can be split at a frame-level, no quality is lost (and either way, backups of the original file can be made throughout the process). This would facilitate larger collections (but probably not yours). Just an idea though.. -
Inappropriate?"identify cue files on import, and split the tracks"
Thats make no sense, if songbird can do that then it can play directly the original mp3 extracting the tracks info from the cue sheet. On the other hand it could be a nice feature for an add-on -
Inappropriate?G'day Oldarney.
I never said splitting is the be-all and end all solution. In fact, pretty sure I mentioned it was only a solution to the symptoms ;) In the case of torrents, yes, that's a genuine benefit. That's a GOOD reason to use them. Same as having 300GB of them. I personally wouldn't want to convert 400 cue sheets either... Whilst I will help someone bulk split 30 album, 300GB would take hours to split.
Either way, now that valid arguments I feel have been made, the best solution I'd feel would be a combination of two separate solutions:
1) Add cue support. This allows users who want to keep their files together to do so. Initially, this would probably be easiest to implement initially appearing as many tracks, but use the single file. Would be handy to generate a few mockups.
2) To also add support to split the files within songbird manually or automatically. This would allow users like me to seemlessly break up the Mp3's and flacs (for maximum compatibility, disabled by default of course). The same code could be reused for device support, to allow a user to split parts of a track to copy to their portable media device (as such devices aren't happy with cues). And by automatically marking ID3 tag in the files as a compilation in the process, we wouldn't run into the mess iTunes has (one of their messes anyway).
A combination of both covers cues on every level:
1) Users who don't want to split them win (for time issues, to maintain the hash files, or other reasons)
2) Users who only want selected sections of a track to put on their media players win (because it uses the functionality I want)
3) Users who prefer their files to be split to maximise compatibility win.
I asked what the advantages of cue's were, to see if there was actually benefit's having both (genuine ones). Whilst not all reasons were technically valid (such as the issues with compilations and gapless playback, which can be easily worked around to make them seamless), there were some good reasons presented, which I didn't notice (like the bittorrent thing I didn't because here in Australia, we have tight internet quota's, so can't seed).
So now that I have seen valid technical benefits from both sides, I'm quite convinced that to provide the full experience, that both would be required to fulfill everyones requirements. Anyway, flexibility is a good thing..
I’m happy that finally good technical benefits of this idea have been presented. I now believe to fulfill everyone's needs its a 2 pronged approach, not just one.
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Inappropriate?Anybody who uses CUE files understands how they work. It's really simple to understand that if a CUE file shows a media player where tracks are in a file, a program could be written to separate these into separate files.
That being said, anybody who is requesting CUE support understands how CUE works, and appreciate it's design. They don't need to give anybody a reason why they want CUE support. It's just that simple.
I’m indifferent
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Hear, hear!
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Inappropriate?That's true, but users will rarely think about the problem completely, and often simply identify what is best for them. But ultimately, its about what is best for everyone! I know someone whose a software engineer, and is developing a system for a major company. They sat down and discussed the specifications, and signed on it. After it was completed though, the other half of the clients company decided it wasn't exactly what they needed.
With software development, there are plenty of solutions. Just because certain popular software may do things a certain way, does not always mean that other ways shouldn't be investigated. Users are generally slow to warm to other ideas, but often, they may ultimately prefer them. Simply saying "well, this is the way its done now and its right" isn't a good approach, and it stumps innovation.
The best developers are those that look at a problem from a blank perspective, look at all the solutions, and find out what all affected users need. By analysing the problem in full, analysing all the requirements and looking at the exact needs of customers sometimes uncovers interesting new ways of doing things that are better. When you don't mimic others sometimes the alternate solutions aren't popular, but it helps determine:
1) Why a solution is needed in the first place
2) If the solution is important enough to be a priority
3) Valid reasons for the solution being required (users wants are often wrong, such as here I was told that only cue files can playback songs seamlessly, which is totally untrue)
4) If there are alternative solutions
5) And most importantly, if a solution has any holes. Whilst there is high demand for inbuilt cue reading support, it isn't a complete solution. It solves the core problem, but it doesn't fulfil ALL the problems. Hence why a combination of solutions is required to facilitate all users. If I had not brought up the issue with portable media players, it would have been brought up after implementation by users.
I simply want a solution that fulfills everyones needs, and does so properly.2 Comments Add a comment
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for portable media players copy the entire song. Can songbird even convert Flac's to mp3s? most people here have other ways of putting specific parts of cue mixes on their mp3 players, if anyone would ever want to do that. This is because no player handles flac's or cue.
Here is another proposal, (btw, i never proposed anything, i was just inciting action. Action always ignites inspiration, rarely does inspiration lead to action.)
1. The only reason i wan't cue files is to skip to certain parts of the song's (in this case mixes); with that said a markers system would suffice. Where hitting forward would not jump to the next file, but instead the next marker on the song or mix. The markers would be visible on the timeline (or what ever you call the scrobbling bar).
2. A special character, symbol, or color at the Beginning of the name would destinguish the flac from other music files. clicking the the file would have a special option inciting to display the file as tracks or not.
3. anytime a track of the flac was sent to an MP3 player a dialog would say that the entire file will be copyed. Truth of the matter is that mixes were never meant to be split up. It's like a piece of footage with long cross dissolved transitions and slitting one of the transitions in half then pasting that onto another clip. The result would be a jump cut with artifacts from the last clip, or song.
With that said. An addon could handle the slitting up of tracks in order to put them in MP3 players. if the "show markers as tracks" feature is to out of sync with song bird, then make that feature into an addon that would use the markers for reference on where to split the song. A markers system would set songbird apart from others. Imagine being able to skip to a predefined part of a song you like, or hate. cue file's would be the core of such a feature. A new cue file would be generated everytime someone made a marker. -
G'day,
Songbird gets transcoding next release, and the Sansa players all support FLAC/Ogg/whatever now (in fact I was considering a sansa Clip before to replace my iPod shuffle which I got for free, but am now hoping to move to a 720p capable Android phone when the new nvidia mobile chipsets are out). As portable media players get phased out for mobile phones, we can start to assume that all of them (except the iphones because Apple like to monopolise) will support all formats..
Yes, you can copy the entire song, but what if you want certain section? Your idea of a marker system is actually a slightly more generic version of my solution, which actually improves on it (so I'd approve of that).
As I mentioned, its about generics, and whilst there may be a way to split the files using external apps, its about allowing users to treat the files as they want, whilst also providing options to developers who want to extend songbird.
Andrew -
Inappropriate?Andrew. Don't forget that not all media/mp3 -players support gapless playback. So, I'd presume people having such players and wanting to listen to songs mixed together on the go, do not want to split the songs. More likely they'd want to join the songs in the case they'd have the songs separated.5 Comments Add a comment
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This just shows that consumers aren't getting what they want. Consumers want CUE support of Mp3 and FLAC. Who will give it to them and when?
Edit: If something doesn't do what you want it to do (iPod) don't buy one :D -
@earthmeLon
Would you happen to know where song bird is head quatered?
If its close to where I live i would be more than happy to take a trip and strike. I can already hear it "We want cue support and we want it know". -
G'day,
I wouldn't go as far as saying that the lack of cue support means that users aren't getting what they want. Technologies such as Transcoding, improved metadata handling, CD ripping and Video support potentially benefit everyone, and there is no way to support them without opening other programs. Furthermore, they are more useful to programmers, who may use them for their own extensions (transcoding for instance will be used by the ipod extensions and MTP extensions so that all music which is sent to a target device plays properly).
Its about cost/tradeoff benefits. Replay Gain was probably added early because its VERY easy to add (its just an extra ID3 tag). Whereas CUE support isn't as easy, requires an entire parsing engine and a redesign of the songlist to work well. Whilst cue files aren't supported, the MP3 files can currently be played, and whilst cue files are close to the top of idea kitchen, POTI are knocking off the top items. You must also remember that some items on Songbird have a much higher cost then platform specific players, because they need to be designed in a cross-platform kind of way. This slows down initial development,
I've hung out in the open source world for a VERY long time now, and have sent a lot of bug reports and suggestions to many different companies. POTI are easily the most responsive company I have met. I'd expect that after the Songbird foundation is complete (by the end of the year), that Songbird will probably start adding features such as this. However, it doesn't make sense to start implementing features which can be worked around, before features such as full video support that cannot.
Like I said, not employed by POTI, but from the programming side of things, I think they are doing fine ;)
You could go riot in front of their building if you want, but the reality is, like other free software, they need to prioritise what the crowd wants, and I believe they are doing so. Also, remember that POTI does give away prizes and such to developers who contribute patches and such (so there is incentive for adding this feature if you are a developer).
Andrew -
@Andrew: When you put it in that perspective: "However, it doesn't make sense to start implementing features which can be worked around, before features such as full video support that cannot.", I think you've hit the nail on the head.
I wasn't trying to say that Songbird devs weren't giving or planning to give their consumers what they want. I was trying to suggest that it's a problem all over the world. People have given up their buying power and have started to buy things that don't satisfy them because that is all that is available.
I also think it's silly to complain too much when someone is giving you something for free. I really appreciate the hard work going into Songbirds, but I won't be able to appreciate it as my player until cue support has been integrated. -
On top of that, there is very little competition in the fields of podcasting and video, compared to cue sheet support. Automatic downloads of podcasts is ONLY available in lime and iTunes. Same goes for music organizers with video organizing built in. I have zero interest in using Songbird for video playback, i would like podcasting support, but i can live without it, i can't say the same for the many who have several gigs worth of cue sheet music.
Your basically cutting out European music out of your player by not including cue sheet support. -
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Inappropriate?I think the discussion is taking the wrong way. The company is already considering the implementation of CUE sheet support, so why discuss about if CUE sheet support is or is not necessary? The need for it has already been stablished and what we should discuss here is the best way to implement it.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?I guess cue sheet support could be a breaking point in question "What linux player is THE BEST?"...
So,it is REALLY needed.
P.S. Anyway,i'm using Songbird because its much more serious than other audio player for linux. (If there were some firefox add-ons support in songbird,I'd forget about firefox too :D)
But,cue sheets are needed anyway... >_<
So,act like Nike(TM): "Just DO IT!"
I’m :hope:
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Inappropriate?I don't understand why, outside of FB2K and Winamp w/ it's crappy plugins, that developers are so against this function.
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Inappropriate?G'day,
Actually, I don't think its that the developers are against this function (or are successfully keeping their hate VERY silent).
The harsh reality is that whilst they work like machines, they are only capable of doing a few things at once. And whilst Cue support is very popular, they do appear to be handling them mainly in order of popularity and usefulfulness. So I'd say, just give it time ;)
In idea kitchen, cue support is only 10th spot or so, and its probably something that could work as a plugin (at least one way of implementing it can be, the ideal method maybe not), whereas, transcoding for instance really needs to be integrated into Core to work well, and they are much higher on the list.
I’m confident still it will get done eventually. But they need to "just do" stuff like CD ripping first because it is more popular
1 person thinks
this is one of the best points
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Inappropriate?No CUE support is a showstopper for me.
I have all my CDs ripped as single wavpack file with cuesheets.
So far Songbird is completely useless: it is neither playing wavpack nor supporting cue sheets.
I’m frustrated
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Inappropriate?Very recently I ran into Qmmp and it supports not only FLAC/WavePack, et al., but it also supports embedded CUE sheets, which makes it a first for Linux.
You may have to compile it from source if your distro doesn't have version 0.3.x, but it's well worth it.
I’m thankful
4 Comments Add a comment
This is one of the best points
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@ByteMastr: Thanks for the alternative. Its apparently our only choice to look for better alternative and people who actually CARE about the first people who support software in the early stage, GEEKS.
With that said i think Winamp isn't bad at all, its not very fancy in graphics. But it has awesome geek oriented capablilities. It does alot of things well including unparalleled MTP support, great podcasting, a video player, and great CUE and FLAC support. Its everything a geek could need, without the open source part. -
Nice features... the GUI is just so horrible that I personally consider that sort of applications to be utterly useless.
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Nice features... the GUI is just so horrible that I personally consider that sort of applications to be utterly useless.
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Eh, you can sit and look at a purdy player that won't play your music (the way you want), or you can hide an ugly one that will play the music the way you want.
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