Recursive Cue Creator is a Java application that
I wrote to generate cue sheets for use with the Cics Play memory player software
(or any other music player that supports cue sheets). The application will start at any directory
you specify, and recursively drill through the directory structure, creating a separate cue sheet
for each directory that contains wav or flac files. In the Options menu, you can specify
whether to save all generated cue sheets to a single directory, or save each cue sheet within the
directory where the music files are found. If you save all cue sheets to a separate output directory,
all cue sheet entries will contain the full path to the music files. If you choose to save to the
folders where the music files are stored, the entries to individual music files are relative and
do not include a full path.
In general, a person who rips their music collection to individual flac files would not need
to use cue sheets because most media players will search your library and read the tags from
the mp3 and flac files. Cics Play, however, does not include this functionality, and is
most conveniently used with cue sheets.
This application is only useful if you have ripped your CDs to individual music files
per song, and if you have a directory structure something like
Library Root\Artist 1\Album 1
Library Root\Artist 1\Album 2
Library Root\Artist 2\Album 1...
or
Library Root\Genre\Artist 1\Album 1
Library Root\Genre\Artist 1\Album 2
Library Root\Genre\Artist 2\Album 1...
The program currently supports WAV, FLAC, MP3, and APE file types. You can choose to
read embedded tags in FLAC and MP3 files where available instead of having the application attempt to
discern the tags from the file system directory structure.
Directions
- Press the "Set Library Root" button and browse to the root directory of your music library.
- By default, the application will save a single cue sheet within each directory where music files are
found. The danger here is that there is a possibility that you could overwrite an existing cue sheet.
To change this behavior, click on the "Use Custom Output Directory" check box, and browse to the
folder where you wish to save all of the generated cue sheets.
- Set options accordingly in the Options menu (see below).
- Press the "Process Library" button. The application will show status and notify you when it is complete.
Options
- Use Custom Output Directory: By default, the application will
write one cue sheet in every directory under the library root that it finds
music files in. This option will allow you to specify a single directory
to write all resulting cue sheets to. When this option is set, all cue
sheets entries will contain the full path to each music file referenced
in the cue sheet. Clicking on this option will bring up a Directory Browser
selection window with which you should choose the output directory where the
cue sheets will be written to. Selecting the Cancel button in the
directory browser window will unset the option and restore the default
functionality of the application.
- Use Embedded Tags when Processing FLAC and MP3: By default,
the application will determine the cue sheet information from the music
library directory structure and file names. Check this option if you
would like the application to attempt to use information from the tags
embedded in FLAC and MP3 files instead of folder and file names. This
option will increase processing time quite a bit because some flac files
contain album art as well. If there is an error reading from the
embedded tags for a specific music file, or if the tag is not available,
the application will revert to using folder and file names to get information
for that music file. Note that the application does not read embedded tags
from APE nor WAV files.
- Title Tracks "Artist - Title" when Track Artist Differs:
When reading embedded tags from FLAC and MP3 files, this option will
set the track title to Artist - Title only when the track artist
differs from the album artist.
- Substitute Composer for Genre when Genre is Classical: This option
will write the Composer tag into the Genre field of the cue sheet when Composer
is available and the Genre is already set to "Classical". This option is only
useful when reading embedded tags from FLAC and MP3 files. Setting it will
have no effect otherwise.
- Remove Track Number and File Extension from Track Title:
This option will attempt to remove the trailing file extension and
leading track number from the Track Title field. When this
option is used in conjunction with the Use Embedded Tags when Processing
FLAC and MP3 option, only files that do not contain embedded tags
will be affected.
- Parse Artist and Album from a Single Parent Folder:
Use this option if you set up your music library using single folders
named similar to Artist Name - Album Name. When setting this option,
a dialog box will appear asking you to enter the characters that separate
artist from album title. When you answer, make sure you enter blank spaces
as well as other seperator characters. For example, lets say one of your
folders containing songs was named Pat Metheny Group - The First Circle,
you would enter " - " (space dash space without the quotes). The application will
attempt to set the Artist and Album Title fields from the single folder name.
- Use One Parent Folder in Cue Sheet Name: This option sets
the name of the cue sheet to the name of the folder where music files
are found. When reading embedded tags in FLAC and MP3 files, the cue
sheet is named from the Album tag.
- Use Two Parent Folders in Cue Sheet Name: This option sets
the name of the cue sheet to the name of the folder where music files
are found, prepended by that folder's parent folder. This option is
meant to be used when your library folder structure is Artist \
Album \ Songs.When reading embedded tags from FLAC and MP3 files,
the cue sheet is named from the Artist tag plus the Album tag.
- Use Three Parent Folders in Cue Sheet Name: If your library
folder structure looks like Library Root \ Genre \ Artist \ Album \
Songs, the cue sheet names will be Genre - Artist - Album.cue,
hence alphabetized by genre - artist - album instead of artist - album.
When reading embedded tags from embedded FLAC and MP3 files, the cue
sheets are named from the tags instead of the file system folders.
Notes
- The application will work across mapped network drives, but will run slower.
- When using a custom output directory, the file entries in the resulting cue
sheets contain the full path to the file, so in this circumstance the cue sheets are
generally not transportable across computers.