Flac - Apr 2009 - cuepoints: accuracy, titles and players

Hello,

I managed to insert cuepoints from a cue sheet and
check them with metaflac. I witnessed that the FLAC
headers then had additionnals sections (one for cuepoints
and one for seekpoints), but i could not find documentation
how the format used to store them (frame counts for both ?).

Anyway it seems that cuepoints must be specified
in MM:SS:fr format.

It would be nice if those could be specified also
as frame counts (this alternate format is allowed
for seekpoints):
--seekpoint={#|X|#x|#s}

so how about extending --cue or --cuepoints to such formats.

frame counts provides high accuracy, and can be easily
computed from WAV files (sox) ... whereas MM:SS:fr
format is less accurate and "fr" is a wild parameter.

By the way, are you aware of any media player
which is aware of cuepoints ?

(one more remark: cuesheet TITLE info gets lost upon importing,
it might be interesting to preserve it so that it could
be displayed by players when one jumps to a new cuepoint).

Phil

--- On Mon, 4/20/09, porte64 at free.fr <porte64 at free.fr> wrote:
> From: porte64 at free.fr <porte64 at free.fr>
> Subject: [Flac] cuepoints: accuracy, titles and players
> To: flac at xiph.org
> Date: Monday, April 20, 2009, 10:07 AM
> Hello,
> 
> I managed to insert cuepoints from a cue sheet and
> check them with metaflac. I witnessed that the FLAC
> headers then had additionnals sections (one for cuepoints
> and one for seekpoints), but i could not find documentation
> how the format used to store them (frame counts for both
> ?).
> 
> Anyway it seems that cuepoints must be specified
> in MM:SS:fr format.
> 
> It would be nice if those could be specified also
> as frame counts (this alternate format is allowed
> for seekpoints):
> --seekpoint={#|X|#x|#s}
not sure what you mean by frame counts but the cue points can
also be absolute sample numbers like --seekpoint=#
> so how about extending --cue or --cuepoints to such
> formats.
> (one more remark: cuesheet TITLE info gets lost upon
> importing,
> it might be interesting to preserve it so that it could
> be displayed by players when one jumps to a new cuepoint).
http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html#general__no_cuesheet_tags

Thank you Josh, the link clearly explains FLAC's philosophy and it souds
quite logical:

"For FLAC the intention is that applications can calculate the CDDB or
CDindex ID from the CUESHEET block and look it up in an online or local database
just like CD rippers and players do. But if you really want it in the file
itself, the track metadata should be stored separate from the CUESHEET, and
already can be because of FLAC's metadata system. There just isn't a
method specified yet because as soon as it is, people will say that it's not
flexible enough."

About the other point :
> not sure what you mean by frame counts but the cue points can
> also be absolute sample numbers like --seekpoint=#
This is exactly what i am looking for (cuepoints specified as
absolute frame numbers) it seems you have something working,
but what's the option/syntax for this ?

As there is no --cuepoint option, i presume that absolute frame
numbers must be specified within cuesheet files instead of HH:MM:FR
as in the following extract ?
Or do i have to specify something so that FLAC creates cuepoints
from seekpoints ?

 TRACK 01 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 0
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 12345678
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 87654321

Phil