MMH: How to Create CUE files for MKV files

[ted_b]

I tagged all MKAs with MP3TAG but jRiver only recognized the artists.

Yes, I used JRiver tagging and added Album name, which is fine, cuz I wanted (Atmos Mix) as a suffix. Now sits in Albums list just fine. I will do this for all Atmos MKA's.

 

[himey]

Creating sidecars or a cue will add the tags to JRiver.

JRiver makes tagging pretty simple but I am going to go back and add a cue or sidecars for when/if I add another library, although the sorting feature in jRiver is so versatile, you can get away with just one library which is a strength of jRiver.

 

[himey]

Is the ignoring of "The" in band name's, working in jRiver for anyone?

 

[bracelis]

For JRiver, we're on a quest to find a method to:

1. Get Atmos BDA tracks into the JRiver Audio Library
2. Ensure gapless playback for Atmos tracks in River Audio Library
3. (not critical but ideal) Have individual Audio files (allows adding any song to a playlist)

JRiver has a feature called "Particles".
Particles - JRiverWiki

In this example, I created one MKV with all the songs, and all the audio streams (Stereo, DTS-HD 5.1, Atmos).
I added the MKV to JRiver -- it shows under the Audio library together with all the other audio files (FLAC, SACD ISO, etc).

I added 3 "particles" (i.e. 3 individual songs) -- each particle is just a reference/pointer within the MKV (with a start / end time).
In the screenshot below, the first 3 lines are the particles, and the last line is the original MKV. If you want the Particles and the whole MKV album to appear as separate albums, then just use a different album name for the particles and the whole MKV.

So if I play the "Here Comes The Sun" particle / song, then it goes to that part of the MKV.
As I mentioned, the MKV contains all the audio streams, so I'm able to select any of the streams, including Atmos (which will stream properly to the HDMI / receiver as Atmos). I believe you mentioned that Atmos only works in JRIiver if it's the only audio stream in the MKV -- but that is not the case based on my experience.

JRiver 'remembers' which audio stream you selected the last time you played each individual particle/song. So if you selected Atmos the last time you played that song, it will select Atmos the next time you play that song, even after you restart Windows. The same thing applies if you play the whole MKV.

Each individual particle / song can be added to a playlist, together with other file types (FLAC, individual song within a SACD ISO, etc).

When you play the particles, there's a pause and it's not gapless when it plays the next particle.
If I want to play the songs gapless, then I can just play the MKV itself (not the particles within the MKV). so of course the MKV will just play continuously.

Or if you have a couple of favorite songs that you want to play gapless and add to a playlist, then you create one "Particle" which contains those two songs, then add it to the playlist.

Edit:

The particles feature also works with the Blu Ray BDMV disc folder structure / backup.
And you can also add those particles/songs to a playlist.

 

[HomerJAU]

MMH's Split to MKA tool will do all this

I will move the ‘Split to MKA’ tool in MMH and add its functionality to the ‘Extract Audio from MKV’ tool (remove the “Split MKA‘ tool) in a future release since recent updates to Extract Audio have added more output options. It originally only supported FLAC output and it makes sense to have all it the single tool.

 

[himey]

I will move the ‘Split to MKA’ tool from MMH add its functionality to the ‘Extract Audio from MKV’ tool (and remove the “Split MKA‘ tool) in future release since recent updates to Extract Audio have added more output options. It originally only supported FLAC output and it makes sense to have all it the single tool.

The cue files I outputted for MKAs works great in both jRiver and Foobar. Without the cue file, jRiver doesn't recognize the Album title or release date on a properly tagged MKA file. Simple procedure adding a cue to each album. Thanks again!

 

[HomerJAU]

The cue files I outputted for MKAs works great in both jRiver and Foobar

Cue files work in Kodi too for mka. But there’s a known bug in Kodi 19.0 where cue files are only read the first time a new album and cue are added. If the cue is updated Kodi doesn’t see the changes.

That’s now fixed but won’t be officially released until 19.1. (The fix is now in Kodi 19 nightly builds, or the workaround in 19.0 is to remove the album and cue from the library and then add again as a new).

 

[rjpinca]

Cue files work in Kodi too for mka. But there’s a known bug in Kodi 19.0 where cue files are only read the first time a new album and cue are added. If the cue is updated Kodi doesn’t see the changes.

That’s now fixed but won’t be officially released until 19.1. (The fix is now in Kodi 19 nightly builds, or the workaround in 19.0 is to remove the album and cue from the library and then add again as a new).

How about the Kodi Leia 18.9 version - do cue files work for mka files?

Thanks so much for all the work you do on MMH - a wonderful tool.

 

[HomerJAU]

How about the Kodi Leia 18.9 version - do cue files work for mka files?

Thanks so much for all the work you do on MMH - a wonderful tool.

Yes cues are fine in earlier versions. The Kodi devs have made many library improvements in 19 and introduced a bug (what I do occasionally, all part of the dev process )

 

[timbre4]

I will move the ‘Split to MKA’ tool in MMH and add its functionality to the ‘Extract Audio from MKV’ tool (remove the “Split MKA‘ tool) in a future release since recent updates to Extract Audio have added more output options. It originally only supported FLAC output and it makes sense to have all it the single tool.

Goodness, so much heavy lifting in this thread!! I do appreciate how much simpler it is to use MMH for MKV tasks than AudioMuxer.

Just a small request - unless I'm missing something, it would be nice to have a Clear button in the Split MKV into chapters and Create Audio files window. There is Remove Track but I have to highlight the 10-20 tracks manually before I can use it. Not to be lazy here, it's just that I've seen the Clear button available in the Rename/Tag window, etc. and it's just a nice to have. Thanks for all this work!

 

[HomerJAU]

Hey Tim. Thanks for the feedback.

I’ve been doing some more work on MMH over the weekend and will add the clear button to next release.

I’m updating docs and doing some clean up work on a new feature and should release next version late this week.

 

[ted_b]

Garry,
Is there a donations page where we can thank you with $ for all the MMH work?

 

[HomerJAU]

There is Remove Track but I have to highlight the 10-20 tracks manuall

You can use select the first track, then SHIFT + Click on the last to select the range. Then REMOVE will remove all selected. Also CTRL + Click and click each one (holding the SHFT key) to select multiples.

The next release will support CTRL + A to select all, these are standard Windows multi select methods for files.

 

[timbre4]

You can use select the first track, then SHIFT + Click on the last to select the range. Then REMOVE will remove all selected. Also CTRL + Click and click each one (holding the SHFT key) to select multiples.

The next release will support CTRL + A to select all, these are standard Windows multi select methods for files.

I was using Shift + Click but spoiled. Once you see Clear that seems like the answer. Yes, I’d be content with Ctrl-A support. Thanks for so much.

 

[decahill480]

A minor issue with the "Chapter Editor" dialog:
When you click the Open MKV/MKA file button, the resulting dialog does not allow you to open an MKA file. The wildcard '*' is in front of the comma when it should be behind the comma delineating the mp4 extension. You can work around it by renaming the mka file to have an mkv or mp4 extension but must remember to rename it back after you've completed the Chapter Editing.

 

[HomerJAU]

Thanks. Will fix today.

EDIT: New MMH 4.2.11 now uploaded with fix.

If you are using a recent release you can drag and drop input files from Explorer into the Chapter tool grid

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I must be doing something wrong. I want to use a cue file for concert video playback using kodi. My example is the Cat Stevens Majkat DVD.

I rip the MKV
I use MMH to create a cue file
I load the cue file and the MKV into a music source folder
I scan the folder into kodi

Kodi never recognizes the addition to the library.

VLC will play back the MKV as usual
VLC will recognize the cue file but plays it in strange order

Any suggestions regarding what I'm doing wrong?

 

[HomerJAU]

Kodi never recognizes the addition to the library.

Have you added ‘MKV’ as a valid music file extension in your Kodi advancedsettings.xml file?

Add this to the Kodi advancedsettings.xml file in the Kodi userdata folder: (this adds both MKV and MP4 to the files Kodi recognizes as Audio files in its music library).

<musicextensions>
<add>.mkv|.mp4</add>
</musicextensions>

The CUE file and MKV file must have the same file name (excluding extensions). Example:
Pink Floyd - Live (1972).mkv
Pink Floyd - Live (1972).cue

NOTE: MKV and MP4 files when placed under a Music Source with CUE and scanned will appear in the Kodi Music Library NOT the Music Video Library

BTW, a recent (I’m sure) change in Kodi was for music library to presume MKA files with chapters are audio books (not music) so for a MKA file with chapters to work with a CUE file, chapters must be removed from the MKA file. So after using the MMH Chapter Editor tool to Save the CUE file, Select all the chapters in the grid (CTRL+A) the ‘Remove Selected’ and Save the MKA file.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Have you added ‘MKV’ as a valid music file extension in your Kodi advancedsettings.xml file?

Add this to the Kodi advancedsettings.xml file in the Kodi userdata folder: (this adds both MKV and MP4 to the files Kodi recognizes as Audio files in its music library).

<musicextensions>
<add>.mkv|.mp4</add>
</musicextensions>

The CUE file and MKV file must have the same file name (excluding extensions). Example:
Pink Floyd - Live (1972).mkv
Pink Floyd - Live (1972).cue

NOTE: MKV and MP4 files when placed under a Music Source with CUE and scanned will appear in the Kodi Music Library NOT the Music Video Library

BTW, a recent (I’m sure) change in Kodi was for music library to presume MKA files with chapters are audio books (not music) so for a MKA file with chapters to work with a CUE file, chapters must be removed from the MKA file. So after using the MMH Chapter Editor tool to Save the CUE file, Select all the chapters in the grid (CTRL+A) the ‘Remove Selected’ and Save the MKA file.

I think that last part might be it thank you Homer

 

[LuvMyQuad]

For those following this, I finally got this to work.

I didn't have an advancedsettings.xml file in my Kodi install at all. So I created one with notepad. In addition to the code @HomerJAU supplied above you also need to add the line <advancedsettings> as the very first line and </advancedsettings> as the last line. After doing this and restarting Kodi it all worked as it should. When I chose my test video (Magikat), I got a track menu, where any track can be chosen. Choose the first track, and the whole video plays in order with no glitches.

On a windows machine the advancedsettings.xml file is located in:
This PC/local disc(c/users/"account name"/appdata/roaming/Kodi/userdata

Thanks again Homer.