Support → Fission

Using cue sheets with Fission

Fission features support for reading and writing cue sheets, small, plain-text files that describe how an audio file is divided into various segments. Cue sheets are most often utilized for longer recordings: a music album, a DJ mix, a podcast, a digitized cassette or record side, or an audiobook. They allow a single continuous file to be treated with separate information in each section.

Cue sheets may sound similar to chapterized audio files, which are also supported by Fission. Both can enhance an audio file, but a cue sheet is not integrated into the audio file. Rather, it is a separate document used to describe its segmentation.

You can apply a cue sheet to add split points and clip titles to a file you’re working on in Fission. You can also save a cue sheet that describes the splits in your current file, for use in other applications.

The basic format

A cue sheet begins with a FILE line, naming the audio file it describes as a whole. Each section of audio in a cue sheet, the clips Fission marks off via split points, is noted as a TRACK. Those TRACKs each have an ordered number, a start time, and optional details such as a title.

A simple cue sheet looks like this:

PERFORMER "Artist Name"
TITLE "Album Title"
FILE "Recording.mp3" MP3
  TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE "Opening"
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE "Interlude"
    INDEX 01 03:24:00
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE "Finale"
    INDEX 01 07:15:45

The most important pieces are:

FILE

Names the audio file the cue sheet describes, in quotation marks, followed by its format (such as MP3, WAVE, or AIFF).

TRACK

Begins a new track. Tracks are numbered in order, and Fission treats them all as audio.

INDEX 01

The track’s start time, written as minutes:seconds:frames. There are 75 frames in a second, following the standard used by audio CDs. In the example above, 03:24:00 means three minutes and twenty-four seconds.

TITLE

The title tag. When placed before the first track, it applies to the whole file. When placed within a TRACK, it applies to that track.

PERFORMER

The artist tag. Similar to the TITLE, it can apply to the whole file or just a track.

Fission reads the Title, Artist, Composer, Genre, and Comment fields from a cue sheet. Other entries that can appear in the format are recognized, but not used.

Applying cue sheet data

Applying a cue sheet causes Fission to read a cue sheet file and apply split points at each track’s start time. When metadata is included in the cue sheet, it will be used to fill in the clip titles and other tags.

You can open a cue sheet directly by double-clicking it or choosing Open from the File menu. A cue sheet defines a related audio file, which Fission will need to load. It will look for the file alongside the cue sheet, and if it cannot find it, it will ask you to locate it.

If an audio file is already open in Fission, you can choose the Apply Cue Sheet… command from the Tools menu, then select your desired cue sheet. Fission then adds the split points and metadata to the current file, regardless of what is defined within the cue sheet itself.

Saving a cue sheet

To create a cue sheet from your current work, ensure you’ve placed some split points in your file. Then choose the Save Cue Sheet… command from the File menu. Fission will save two files: your audio file, as well as a matching cue sheet beside it. Both files will have the same name, with the cue sheet file getting a .cue extension. The cue sheet describes each clip as a track, along with the titles and other details you’ve already entered.

Additional information

Here are some final notes that will be useful to know about cue sheets and Fission:

• Fission treats a cue sheet as describing a single audio file, and does not support references to multiple audio files (i.e., using more than one FILE line).
• When Fission writes a genre into a cue sheet, it uses a GENRE line. Some media players, including VLC and IINA, may not be able to open cue sheets that contain this. If a player refuses to open a cue sheet Fission created, you can open the .cue file in a text editor and change the GENRE value to REM GENRE, which those players will accept.
• Cue sheet features are not available in the Mac App Store version of Fission. If you haven’t already, you can migrate to the direct version of the app.

← Back to Fission Support Center