A cue sheet, or cue file, is a metadata file which describes how the tracks of a CD or

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

are laid out. Cue sheets are stored as

plain text In computing, plain text is a loose term for data (e.g. file contents) that represent only characters of readable material but not its graphical representation nor other objects ( floating-point numbers, images, etc.). It may also include a limi ...

files and commonly have a

filename extension A filename extension, file name extension or file extension is a suffix to the name of a computer file (e.g., .txt, .docx, .md). The extension indicates a characteristic of the file contents or its intended use. A filename extension is typically ...

. CDRWIN first introduced cue sheets, which are now supported by many

optical disc authoring Optical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring, is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded ("burned") onto an optical disc ( ...

applications and media players.

Overview

Cue sheets can describe many types of audio and data CDs. The main data (including audio) for a CD described by a cue sheet is stored in one or more files referenced by the cue sheet. Cue sheets also specify track lengths and

CD-Text CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows storage of additional information (e.g. album name, song name, and artist name) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The specification for CD- ...

including track and disc titles and performers. They are especially useful when dividing audio stored in a single file into multiple songs or tracks. The data files referred to by the cue sheet may be

audio file An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data (excluding metadata) is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size, o ...

s (commonly in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

or WAV format), or plain disc images, usually with a extension. When used for disc images, the format is usually called CUE/BIN, indicating that it stores a disc image composed of one cue sheet file and one or more files. The files are raw

sector Sector may refer to: Places * Sector, West Virginia, U.S. Geometry * Circular sector, the portion of a disc enclosed by two radii and a circular arc * Hyperbolic sector, a region enclosed by two radii and a hyperbolic arc * Spherical sector, a p ...

-by-sector binary copies of tracks in the original discs. These binary files usually contain all 2,352 bytes from each sector in an

optical disc In computing and optical disc recording technologies, an optical disc (OD) is a flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data (bits) in the form of pits and lands on a special material, often aluminum, on one of its flat surfaces. ...

, including control headers and error correction data in the case of CD-ROMs (unlike

ISO image An optical disc image (or ISO image, from the ISO 9660 file system used with CD-ROM media) is a disk image that contains everything that would be written to an optical disc, disk sector by disc sector, including the optical disc file system. I ...

s of CD-ROMs, which store only the user data). However, the TRACK command in a cue sheet file can be used to refer to binary disc images that contain only the user data of each sector, by indicating the specific CD mode of the tracks from which the image was created (which is necessary to know the size of the user data in each sector). The BIN/CUE format is one of the few formats besides Nero's NRG, Alcohol 120%'s MDF/MDS and CloneCD's CCD/IMG/SUB disc image formats to support

Mixed Mode CD A mixed mode CD is a Compact Disc which contains both data and audio in one session. Typically the first track is a data track while the rest are audio tracks. The most common use for mixed mode CDs is to add CD-quality audio to video games on a ...

s which can contain audio CD tracks as well as data tracks. The name "cue sheet" originates from the "send cue sheet" SCSI/ATA command in

. The specification for that command defines a cue sheet format containing mostly the same information, but in a tabular, binary data structure, rather than a text file.

Audio file playback

An entire multi-track

audio CD Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA or CD-DA), also known as Digital Audio Compact Disc or simply as Audio CD, is the standard format for audio compact discs. The standard is defined in the ''Red Book'', one of a series of Rainbow Books (named ...

may be

rip Rest in peace (RIP), a phrase from the Latin (), is sometimes used in traditional Christian services and prayers, such as in the Catholic, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist denominations, to wish the soul of a decedent eternal rest and peac ...

ped to a single audio file and a cue sheet. However, software audio players and hardware

digital audio player A portable media player (PMP) (also including the related digital audio player (DAP)) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored o ...

s often treat each audio file as a single

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. The term has sev ...

entry, which can make it difficult to select and identify the individual tracks. A common solution is to split the original audio file into a series of separate files, one per track. Another approach is for the audio player to support the cue sheet directly. This may involve providing a new playlist (for example, an extra window) for the contents of the cue sheet, or adding an entry for each track directly into the main playlist.

Cue sheet syntax

A cue sheet is a

file containing commands with one or more parameters. The commands usually apply either to the whole disc or to an individual track, depending on the particular command and the context. They may describe the layout of data to be written, or

( metadata). The original specification of the cue sheet syntax and semantics appears in the CDRWIN User Guide. The standard commands are:

Essential commands

: ::Names a file containing the data and its format (such as

, and

WAVE In physics, mathematics, and related fields, a wave is a propagating dynamic disturbance (change from equilibrium) of one or more quantities. Waves can be periodic, in which case those quantities oscillate repeatedly about an equilibrium (r ...

audio file format An audio file format is a file format for storing digital audio data on a computer system. The bit layout of the audio data (excluding metadata) is called the audio coding format and can be uncompressed, or compressed to reduce the file size, o ...

s, and plain "binary" disc images) : ::Defines a track context, providing its number and type or mode (for instance or various CD-ROM modes). Some commands that follow this command apply to the track rather than the entire disc. : ::Indicates an index (position) within the current . The position is specified in ''mm'':''ss'':''ff'' (minute-second-frame) format. There are 75 such frames per second of audio. In the context of cue sheets, "frames" refer to CD sectors, despite a different, lower-level structure in CDs also being known as frames. is required and denotes the start of the track, while is optional and denotes the

pregap The pregap on a Red Book audio CD is the portion of the audio track that precedes "index 01" for a given track in the table of contents (TOC). The pregap ("index 00") is typically two seconds long and usually, but not always, contains silence. Po ...

. The pregap of Track 1 is used for Hidden Track One Audio (HTOA). Optional higher-numbered indexes (02 through 99) are also allowed. : and ::Indicates the length of a track's

or postgap, which is not stored in any data file. The length is specified in the same minute-second-frame format as for .

CD-Text and other metadata commands

: ::Adds a comment that usually has no bearing on the written CD at all, with the exception of some applications that use it to store additional metadata (e.g.

Exact Audio Copy Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a CD ripping program for Microsoft Windows. The program has been developed by Andre Wiethoff since 1998. Wiethoff's motivation for creating the program was that other such software only performed jitter correction while ...

writes some additional fields, which

foobar2000 foobar2000 (often abbreviated as fb2k or f2k) is a freeware audio player for Microsoft Windows, iOS and Android developed by Peter Pawłowski. It has a modular design, which provides user flexibility in configuration and customization. Stan ...

can read). REM should not appear on a line by itself as some applications regard it as a syntax error. : ::Identifies a file containing

information : ::Sets subcode flags of a track : ::Contains the UPC/ EAN code of the disc : ::Define the ISRC of the current :, and ::

metadata; applies to the whole disc or a specific track, depending on the context

Non-standard cue sheets

CD ripping Ripping is extracting all or parts of digital content from a container. Originally, it meant to rip music out of Commodore 64 games. Later, the term was used to extract WAV or MP3 format files from digital audio CDs, but got applied as well to ext ...

programs normally offer the option of creating a separate file for each audio track, with the (pre)gap portion of a track placed at the end of the preceding track's file. This coincides with normal playback operation – the beginning of each file is the beginning of a track, not the gap preceding it – and with the layout described in the disc's table of contents, which doesn't specify gap information at all. The cue sheet format, as specified in the CDRWIN Users Manual, doesn't support file sets of this type; rather, it's designed with the expectation that all of the audio data exists in a single file (CDRWIN only creates cue sheets for that kind of rip) or in separate files, but only with the gap portions of the audio either removed or placed at the beginning of the files. In order to allow cue sheets to be used to burn a CD from ordinary file sets which have the gap portion at the end of each file, the CD ripping & burning program

(EAC) allows the creation of cue sheets that relax the CDRWIN Users Manual's restriction on where FILE commands can be used. This non-conforming cue sheet format, intended only for burning CDs with EAC, is not supported by some other pieces of software, such as the media player

, which allows the use of cue sheets as playlists.

Examples

The MP3 file ''"Faithless - Live in Berlin.mp3"'', contains a live recording of the band

Faithless Faithless are an English band that formed in 1995, with its core members being Rollo, Sister Bliss and Maxi Jazz. Their first album, '' Reverence'', was released in 1996 and their most recent, '' All Blessed'', in 2020. They have sold milli ...

. At this concert, Faithless performed eight songs in the order shown below. Therefore, the track listing is as follows: #Faithless – Reverence #Faithless – She's My Baby #Faithless – Take the Long Way Home #Faithless –

Insomnia Insomnia, also known as sleeplessness, is a sleep disorder in which people have trouble sleeping. They may have difficulty falling asleep, or staying asleep as long as desired. Insomnia is typically followed by daytime sleepiness, low energy ...

#Faithless – Bring the Family Back #Faithless – Salva Mea #Faithless – Dirty Old Man #Faithless – God Is a DJ Since the MP3 is one file containing the entire performance, burning it to a CD as-is would make it inconvenient to skip to individual songs. To design the cue sheet, one must first find the points in the MP3 at which each song starts. The times are cumulative: each track must have a later time than the previous one. The first five lines denote the disc information. This is followed by the information for each track, indented from the rest. The line reads the same for each track, with the exception of the time value that follows it. , and are optional. REM GENRE

Electronica Electronica is both a broad group of electronic-based music styles intended for listening rather than strictly for dancing and a music scene that started in the early 1990s in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the term is mostly used to ...

REM DATE 1998 PERFORMER "Faithless" TITLE "Live in Berlin" FILE "Faithless - Live in Berlin.mp3" MP3 TRACK 01 AUDIO TITLE "Reverence" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 02 AUDIO TITLE "She's My Baby" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 06:42:00 TRACK 03 AUDIO TITLE "Take the Long Way Home" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 10:54:00 TRACK 04 AUDIO TITLE "Insomnia" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 17:04:00 TRACK 05 AUDIO TITLE "Bring the Family Back" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 25:44:00 TRACK 06 AUDIO TITLE "Salva Mea" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 30:50:00 TRACK 07 AUDIO TITLE "Dirty Old Man" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 38:24:00 TRACK 08 AUDIO TITLE "God Is a DJ" PERFORMER "Faithless" INDEX 01 42:35:00 An example of a cue sheet used in conjunction with a CD image file: FILE "sampleimage.bin" BINARY TRACK 01 MODE1/2352 INDEX 01 00:00:00

References

External links

Cue sheet
page on the Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase web site
CUE sheet format documentation
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cue Sheet (Computing) Compact disc Metadata