Cue sheet (computing)

A cue sheet, or cue file, is a metadata file which describes how the tracks of a CD or DVD are laid out. Cue sheets are stored as plain text files and commonly have a filename extension. CDRWIN first introduced cue sheets, which are now supported by many optical disc authoring applications and media players.

A cue sheet, or cue file, is a metadata file which describes how the tracks of a CD or DVD are laid out. Cue sheets are stored as plain text files and commonly have a filename extension. CDRWIN first introduced cue sheets, which are now supported by many optical disc authoring applications and media players. ==Overview== Cue sheets can describe many types of audio and data CDs. The main data (including audio) for a CD described by a cue sheet is stored in one or more files referenced by the cue sheet. Cue sheets also specify track lengths and CD-Text including track and disc titles and performers. They are especially useful when dividing audio stored in a single file into multiple songs or tracks. The data files referred to by the cue sheet may be audio files (commonly in MP3 or WAV format), or plain disc images, usually with a extension. When used for disc images, the format is usually called BIN/CUE, indicating that it stores a disc image composed of one cue sheet file and one or more files. The files are raw sector-by-sector binary copies of tracks in the original discs. These binary files usually contain all 2,352 bytes from each sector in an optical disc, including control headers and error correction data in the case of CD-ROMs (unlike ISO images of CD-ROMs, which store only the user data). However, the TRACK command in a cue sheet file can be used to refer to binary disc images that contain only the user data of each sector, by indicating the specific CD mode of the tracks from which the image was created (which is necessary to know the size of the user data in each sector). The BIN/CUE format is one of the few formats besides Nero's NRG, Alcohol 120%'s MDF/MDS and CloneCD's CCD/IMG/SUB disc image formats to support Mixed Mode CDs which can contain audio CD tracks as well as data tracks. The name "cue sheet" originates from the "send cue sheet" SCSI/ATA command in optical disc authoring. The specification for that command defines a cue sheet format containing mostly the same information, but in a tabular, binary data structure, rather than a text file. In October 2023, a vulnerability was discovered in the libcue library, which parses cue sheets on Linux systems with GNOME desktops. The exploit could give an attacker code execution rights on GNOME systems. $ bchunk image.bin image.cue output.iso ==See also== Comparison of audio player software#Metadata ability Comparison of video player software#Metadata ability Comparison of disc authoring software Exact Audio Copy (EAC) – a proprietary CD ripping program MusicBrainz Picard – a cross-platform MusicBrainz tag editor written in Python ==References== Cue sheet page on the Hydrogenaudio Knowledgebase web site CUE sheet format documentation

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