Feature request: Generate cue sheet

[BenMcLean]

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Given that I have an m4b or wv file that already has chapters encoded into it, I'd like to output a .cue file or other playlist file with the chapter times in it. That way even programs without proper chapter support could still use the chapters

[sandreas]

Hey there,

thanks for thinking about exporting cue sheets. This should not be too complex, m4b-tool already supports splitting by cue sheets... here is an example how an export cue sheet could look like for an audio book:

REM GENRE Fantasy
REM DATE 1999-11-08
PERFORMER "Stephen Fry"
SONGWRITER "J. K. Rowling"
TITLE "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's stone"
FILE "harry-potter-1.m4b" m4b
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Boy Who Lived."
    PERFORMER "Stephen Fry"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "The Vanishing Glass"
    PERFORMER "Stephen Fry"
    INDEX 01 06:42:00

Although there is a lot of missing information, it might be helpful to be able to export cue.

Unfortunately it will take some time till this will make it into the code though...

[BenMcLean]

Yeah that'd be perfect. I was thinking of hacking together my own script to do it with Python or something bare bones like that, but if you can put it in m4b-tool instead, that'd be great. Appreciate anything you can do, whenever. :)

[sandreas]

If you just need the metadata (regardless in what format), the latest pre-release already is able to export some formats within the meta command - this is where the cue export would also be implemented. There is not only a "chapters" option - it is also possible to --export-cover or --export-description. See m4b-tool help meta for a detailed list of all available options. Some examples:

# use default export filename my-audio-book.chapters.txt
m4b-tool meta my-audio-book.m4b --export-chapters

# use specific filename
m4b-tool meta my-audio-book.m4b --export-chapters=my-chapter-export.txt

# export everything in every format that is supported
m4b-tool meta my-audio-book.m4b --export-all

You can also import chapters the same way, so an export, then editing and then import is no problem, while --import-all will have a priority of what to import, since there are conflicting formats...

[sandreas]

Ok, after some research it seems that cue is clearly not meant for audiobooks (although that does not mean, that there is no way to abuse / workaround it to fit audiobooks needs). Here's why:

• Tracks cannot be shorter than 4 seconds, which might be a problem with short intro chapters
• Cuesheets can have a Maximum of 99 tracks (00-99) - so if there is an audiobook with more than 99 Chapters, a "workaround" in form of sub-indexes would be required
• Although these Tracks can have sub-indexes (INDEX 01 - INDEX 99) there is no real specification for naming of sub-indexes (there is a way using comments with REM, but this is non standard), so Chapter names would not be possible in every case
• Many of the metadata fields in other formats (e.g. ffmetadata) are not specified or non standard

So for now i have to set this back, since m4b-tool is mainly used for audiobooks, but I'll leave this ticket open because it also can be used for other audio files and the topic is pretty interesting.

A good (german) resource for cue sheets is: https://www.audiohq.de/viewtopic.php?id=2695