audio gapless playback and cue sheet support

[praXis]

Definitely need better CUE support.

I renounced of Winamp to use VLC for both music and video, and only thing that I miss is the CUE playing.

Problems that I see with CUE playing:
- if i play a CUE file of a large MP3 when jumping from one track (tracks defined by CUE) to another there is a gap in sound, it should continue flawlessly, like if I were to play directly the MP3
- the same problem with title and artist as mentioned above
- the scrolling bar at the bottom showing the length should show the length of the current track and not the complete MP3

Uploaded a jpeg to the public FTP.

[rogerdpack]

re: gapless: if it's audio maybe you can have sox just combine all the songs into one?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Definitely need better CUE support.

I renounced of Winamp to use VLC for both music and video, and only thing that I miss is the CUE playing.

Problems that I see with CUE playing:
- if i play a CUE file of a large MP3 when jumping from one track (tracks defined by CUE) to another there is a gap in sound, it should continue flawlessly, like if I were to play directly the MP3
- the same problem with title and artist as mentioned above
- the scrolling bar at the bottom showing the length should show the length of the current track and not the complete MP3

Uploaded a jpeg to the public FTP.

Can you share a cue+mp3+all_other_things in a zip in our ftp, please?

[Blackbrook]

Another one with the wish of gapless audio playback. I am not sure in how far it is implemented or where it is on the developer's list. Is it still on the list or already deleted? I appreciate that all of you work on the code in your free time!

Cheers,

Steve

[cpm]

Hello everyone.

I recently copied a mixed audio CD to FLAC format, creating a single (gapless) FLAC file plus some cue sheet (created with EAC). I experienced the following issues with VLC playback:

1) FLAC files may include an optional cue list attached, which is not currently supported by VLC. Such cue markers are usually created when encoding, using --cuesheet=file.cue. Note these markers are offset/timestamps and do not contain any tags for track title/name/etc.

2) Playing a FLAC file from a cue sheet always introduces short gaps between tracks, while playing the FLAC file alone does not.

3) Skipping from one track to another by user request (i.e. clicking on another track from cue playlist) does not seek to the exact point. FLAC seek points stored in file won't match those of cue file, usually. Still, I believe you may get this data from attached cue markers in FLAC file (see 1), or else from file prescan.

4) ARTIST tag from FLAC file overwrites PERFORMER tag for each track defined in cue file.

5) Progress (playback) bar represents the timing for the entire FLAC file, not current track. Such duration is listed for every track in playlist as well, so there's no way to know elapsed/remaining time of current playing track.

[VLC_help]

2. VLC doesn't support gapless track changes.
3. One possible reason might be that FLAC duration is calculated incorrectly. If that is so, any seeking operations will find wrong spot.
4. Yes, since VLC prefers file metadata over playlist metadata.
5. Yes, current design doesn't actually limit the playback range, it only sets start and end points.

[cpm]

2. this is a particular case, where one track follows another in the same stream. it wouldn't be needed to switch to another track, but simply keep playing and update position in playlist and metadata. however i am not aware of how vlc works internally whatsoever.

3. flac is vbr and still duration is calculated correctly, from flac streaminfo data, i presume.

4. the same principle doesn't hold for track titles

[FunkyMonkey]

As far as metadata conflicts, you can edit the metadata in the Flac file and remove the track reference which is read from the title info in the Flac metadata; VLC will then default to track names from the cue file. A good metadata editor is Mp3tag which supports ID3v1, ID3v2.3, ID3v2.4, iTunes MP4, WMA, Vorbis Comments and APE Tags and is available here:
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html