Creating Cue Sheets

[West End]

Hey Guys,
What are you using to create cue sheets now days? All of the projects I record now go right to my mastering guy and he does all of the sequencing and everything else. But I need to master a little project for a friend on a LOW budget and was just wondering what the best tool to use is.

Ken Dabek
West End Recording

[Angie]

For creating cue sheets within SAWStudio you can't beat Cue Sheet Generator
http://www.jms-audioware.com/csg.htm

[TotalSonic]

For creating cue sheets within SAWStudio you can't beat Cue Sheet Generator
http://www.jms-audioware.com/csg.htm

Absolutely - it's an excellent mastering tool to have. fwiw I've posted a tutorial on mastering with CSG at http://www.totalsonic.net/csg.htm

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Dave Labrecque]

Absolutely - it's an excellent mastering tool to have. fwiw I've posted a tutorial on mastering with CSG at http://www.totalsonic.net/csg.htm

Best regards,
Steve Berson

Agreed on CSG as the best way to go.

The poor man's method (writing your own code into a text document) still works for those on a budget, too. Back in my CDR-WIN days, I used their example CUE sheets to create some templates into which I could just paste my own info. The CD frame boundary issue can be a challenge for continous-audio indexing, however.

[bcorkery]

Absolutely - it's an excellent mastering tool to have. fwiw I've posted a tutorial on mastering with CSG at http://www.totalsonic.net/csg.htm

Best regards,
Steve BersonSteve - As always your tutorial is very detailed and explains a lot.

Hmmm, do you have something similar for the SS Frequency Analyzer. I don't think I'm using it to my full benefit.

[Richard Rupert]

Yes, CSG is a happy partner with SAW. I use it frequently.

[Dave Labrecque]

Steve - As always your tutorial is very detailed and explains a lot.

Hmmm, do you have something similar for the SS Frequency Analyzer. I don't think I'm using it to my full benefit.

Bill,

Bob's got a pretty good tutorial-type thing on the FA somewhere, I think. Check out the help file. Or maybe it's on the website?

Though, I may be mistaken. Hmmm...

[bcorkery]

Bill,

Bob's got a pretty good tutorial-type thing on the FA somewhere, I think. Check out the help file. Or maybe it's on the website?

Though, I may be mistaken. Hmmm...Checking ... checking ...

Thanks Dave.

[Ed Snape]

Absolutely - it's an excellent mastering tool to have. fwiw I've posted a tutorial on mastering with CSG at http://www.totalsonic.net/csg.htm

Steve,

Do you have a way to create a cue sheet from the tail end of a file? For example, having a two hour concert recording that you want to do a quick split into two CDs. It is easy to apply CSG to create a cue sheet for the first half of the concert, but I have been stymied at creating cue sheet for the second half, without creating a new SS edl containing only the second half.

Ed

[UpTilDawn]

Steve,

Do you have a way to create a cue sheet from the tail end of a file? For example, having a two hour concert recording that you want to do a quick split into two CDs. It is easy to apply CSG to create a cue sheet for the first half of the concert, but I have been stymied at creating cue sheet for the second half, without creating a new SS edl containing only the second half.

Ed

It would be really easy if CSG would respond to resetting zero on the timeline using Shift/Home, which it doesn't do as far as I can tell.
The only way I've ever known is to split the recording into two edls or two sets of verticle tracks.

DanT

[Angie]

It would be really easy if CSG would respond to resetting zero on the timeline using Shift/Home, which it doesn't do as far as I can tell.
The only way I've ever known is to split the recording into two edls or two sets of verticle tracks.

DanT

There are a couple little enhancements I'd like to see (most of which I forget about until what I want doesn't happen). But this is the big one that tops the list.

[Dave Labrecque]

There are a couple little enhancements I'd like to see (most of which I forget about until what I want doesn't happen). But this is the big one that tops the list.

Agreed. Having flexibility on the beginning and ending points of the CD content within the MT would be nice.

[UpTilDawn]

Agreed. Having flexibility on the beginning and ending points of the CD content within the MT would be nice.

Yeah, not just marking the beginning point, but both beginning and ending would make CSG rock big time!

[Angie]

I came across another enhancement I'd like to see on the Cue Sheet Generator. When creating individual tracks, I'd like it to generate the wave (or mp3 when used with LAME) names based on the track titles entered rather than numbering them. Now if there is a reason it is the way it is, set me straight.

[TotalSonic]

Steve,

Do you have a way to create a cue sheet from the tail end of a file? For example, having a two hour concert recording that you want to do a quick split into two CDs. It is easy to apply CSG to create a cue sheet for the first half of the concert, but I have been stymied at creating cue sheet for the second half, without creating a new SS edl containing only the second half.

Ed

There is unfortunately currently no way to do this with CSG - it would take a major rewrite of its code.
fwiw - I can't really think of a CD mastering program with a viewable sequential timeline view that allows you to arbitrarily determine the pre-gap pause start point in its timeline view. Anyway - I agree it would be a nice enhancement for those trying to do quick masters of live concerts.

The other things I'd really like to see is being able to more easily move index markers (including being able to simply key in the time rather than have to place a cursor), and having all CD Text be accessible for editing on a single dialog page, so that it would all be viewable at once, and so you don't have to click "edit" for each track when you want to change it.

From my understanding Jon has been very busy (and has also been using Linux based apps for a lot of his DAW work) so that I would not expect him to come out with major enhancements for any of his plugins any time soon. Regardless, I've been very happy with CSG and the recent 1.9.1 enhancements have definitely helped me speed up my work flow with it.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[TotalSonic]

I came across another enhancement I'd like to see on the Cue Sheet Generator. When creating individual tracks, I'd like it to generate the wave (or mp3 when used with LAME) names based on the track titles entered rather than numbering them. Now if there is a reason it is the way it is, set me straight.

The reason is that it uses a fairly simple batch script to generate the names for the actual .cue text. In other words file requested for track 1 index = entered_cue_sheet_name_1.wav, etc. etc.

I'm pretty sure Jon could code a way to request the name entered for the Input channel and have this generate the file names, but it's probably a bit more involved than the current method, so would probably take him a bit of time to do.

For me, I generally greatly prefer the current number system, as it allows me a way of much greater guaranteeing that sequences in masters are kept correct even through multiple revisions.

Since I don't really always know the titles of the tracks off hand for the jobs I work on (with several going on every week) the sequence numbers tied to job name works much better in keeping things straight for me than titles.

I can see where having the option though would really help out folks though (especially for mp3 generation). Perhaps having this as an enhancement to LACE would make more sense.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Angie]

Thanks for the explanation Steve. I was really looking more for a reason from a specs stand point. I understand re-writing code would not be high on anyone's list.

Individual track names is more of an MP3 thing for me. So, maybe it should come from LAME instead.


Agreed. Having flexibility on the beginning and ending points of the CD content within the MT would be nice.

One thing I've been doing lately on recording transfers over an hour (most consumer reels :( ) is to create the track IDs as if it will be one CD. Then edit the cue sheet and save as new cue sheets. This obviously isn't the answer in every situation. But it is a work around for some. :)

[Dave Labrecque]

One thing I've been doing lately on recording transfers over an hour (most consumer reels :( ) is to create the track IDs as if it will be one CD. Then edit the cue sheet and save as new cue sheets. This obviously isn't the answer in every situation. But it is a work around for some. :)

Good reminder that the cue sheet is still an editable entity and can be very useful and powerful to know your way around. CSG kinda took all that nitty gritty away from my life (not unlike Calgon and my life's daily drudgery). ;)

[TotalSonic]

Good reminder that the cue sheet is still an editable entity and can be very useful and powerful to know your way around.

One good reference page for Cue Sheet syntax that helps for learning how to edit cue files with a simple text editor like Notepad is at http://digitalx.org/cuesheetsyntax.php

Best regards,
Steve Berson