[Flac-dev] cuesheets w/ PERFORMER & TITLE track info

Wed Apr 23 15:56:10 PDT 2003

I made a similar query some time ago and the resonse was that the CDTEXT
format is rather complex and ugly and diffucult to encapsulate fully in
FLAC (plus adding variable length strings to the CUESHEET block
complicates it somewhat). However I feel that some attempt should be
made all the same.

I have provided my previous posts on the topic at the end of this email.

Incidentally, it is quite easy to impliment your own application
specific method for storing song information in a flac-cuesheet file,
one idea is with the humble vorbis comment block, and make it look like
a CDDB entry, heres an example:

DISCID=b30b9f0c
DTITLE=Foo Fighters / There is Nothing Left to Lose
TTITLE0=Stacked Actors
TTITLE1=Breakout
TTITLE2=Learn to Fly
TTITLE3=Gimme Stitches
TTITLE4=Generator
TTITLE5=Aurora
TTITLE6=Live-in Skin
TTITLE7=Next Year
TTITLE8=Headwires
TTITLE9=Ain't it the Life
TTITLE10=M.I.A.
TTITLE11=Fraternity

No special programming is required to produce a file like this, you can
do it with the flac and metaflac binaries, and as long as your
application understands the fields, all is well. 

However an agreed upon standard for putting this stuff into the CUESHEET
block would be much nicer IMHO. I suggest NOT supporting the CDTEXT
standard itself, but rather the simple subset that the CUESHEET de-facto
standard uses, ie. PERFORMER and TITLE etc.

I guess I could have a crack at doing this myself, but I'd rather not
without the support of the main developers because if they dont actually
want this feature, it will never be commited anyway.

Any thoughts?

Dave

>From - 
Subject: Re: [Flac-dev] new CUESHEET metadata block
From: David Collett <jg at webone.com.au>
To: Josh Coalson <xflac at yahoo.com>
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Josh, 
Thanks for your prompt response!
After some thought I have some further comments/ideas below:

> Internet lookup should not be a necessity; a good CDDB lib
> should be able to fall back to a local copy of the database,
> which could contain only the entries relevant to a users
> library and allow editing.

I hadn't thought of that (local cddb)! I had a look at the cddb server
from www.freedb.org, and had a look at some raw cddb entry files, it's a
pretty simple format(NAME=value pairs), which gets me thinking... maby
forget about supporting the cdtext format in FLAC, and support cddb
instead! 

My proposal would be to use the existing VORBIS_COMMENT block which is
simple and flexible enough, and the code to parse it is already in
FLAC(?). Here an example of what the VORBIS_COMMENT block would look
like, its simply a shamelessly stolen complete cddb entry file:

DISCID=b30b9f0c
DTITLE=Foo Fighters / There is Nothing Left to Lose
TTITLE0=Stacked Actors
TTITLE1=Breakout
TTITLE2=Learn to Fly
TTITLE3=Gimme Stitches
TTITLE4=Generator
TTITLE5=Aurora
TTITLE6=Live-in Skin
TTITLE7=Next Year
TTITLE8=Headwires
TTITLE9=Ain't it the Life
TTITLE10=M.I.A.
TTITLE11=Fraternity
EXTD=
EXTT0=
EXTT1=
EXTT2=
EXTT3=
EXTT4=
EXTT5=
EXTT6=
EXTT7=
EXTT8=
EXTT9=
EXTT10=
EXTT11=
PLAYORDER=

I don't know what those empty tags at the end are, I expect you would
leave them out if there blank...

The best part is that this method doesn't require any changes to FLAC
code, not even a new metadata application block!

What do you think?

Dave
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Subject: Re: [Flac-dev] new CUESHEET metadata block
From: David Collett <jg at webone.com.au>
To: Josh Coalson <xflac at yahoo.com>
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Josh,
Below are some posts I made in your flac cue-sheet thread on hydrogen
audio, I apologise if you've already read them.

Anyway, I am thinking of doing something about this delema (storing
song(tag) information in flac-cuesheet files) and I wanted to get your
thoughts of what might be the best approach. One idea that I thought of
was to have another metadata header pointing to multiple vorbis-comment
headers(or even add this in the CUESHEET header). I'm not sure if thats
easy/possible tho, I haven't delved into the code yet...

Thanks,
Dave

--------------------------
Josh
I am starting to think CD-TEXT support is a good idea, as a means of
tagging more than anything else. I dont really care about CD-TEXT as
such(how many cds/players use it?) but I think it is important that you
are able to 'tag' each song, so that when you play a flac-album in xmms
or whatever, it will display song details etc. I know CDDB is an option
but I would MUCH prefer to contain such metadata IN the file rather than
on the internet, besides some people might actually care about
preserving CD-TEXT itself. Can you think of any other way of storing
this data in the flac file?, it doesnt have to resemble the CD-TEXT spec
itself, rather just contain the same type of data... perhaps another,
optional metadata header, which is a pointer to the flac/id3/ogg info
headers for each track??

Josh,
I just read those links that you provided for CD-TEXT, it certainly does
look complicated!
However, what your doing with flac is to store 'cue-sheets', not
preserve every "bit" on the CD, its up to the cd-recording software to
take the cue-sheet and re-create the original cd (if possible). I would
make a bet that the current format of cue-cheets as supported by burning
software doesnt support the full features of cd-text at all, but rather
a small subset, probably the equivalent of about an id3 tags' worth of
info per song. Maby we could find out the cue-sheet specs and support
what it supports rather try and support the full CD-TEXT format. Even if
we did support the whole CDTEXT format, no burning software (that I know
of) is going to anyway!

On Thu, 2003-04-24 at 07:18, rpp3po wrote:
> Hi there,
> 
> is there any specific reason for ignoring TITLE and PERFORMER info when
> importing CD-TEXT cuesheets into flac files? (These two fields have not
> always been used but they have become widely supported by now). One may
> answer that the preferred method for getting this kind of info for a
> cuesheet-flac would be CDDB, but CDDB info is not always reliable.
> In my opinion the goal "Now a CD can be completely backed up to a single
> FLAC file for archival" has not been reached as long as this metadata is
> incomplete.
> Since there is no standardization for metadatablocks in flac files
> containing multiple tracks, this information could conveniently be stored
> within the integrated cuesheet, just as e.g. the ISRC fields.
> 
> Regards,
> Christian
> 
> 
> 
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