mp3DirectCut User Manual

mp3DirectCut
Version 2.x - User Manual

Contents

Introduction
Basic settings
Navigation
Audio editing
Prelisten and Output
Pause detection
Recording
Project files
Keyboard shortcuts
Command line options

Introduction

mp3DirectCut is a frame based editor for MPEG audio (Layers 2 and 3). You can cut, copy, paste or change the volume without re-encoding anything of the file. This makes mp3DirectCut very fast and prevents loss of audio quality. The program enables easiest navigation even on large files and gives you a visualisation of the MP3 audio data. It can handle Cue sheets allowing to split a file at cue positions. And you can also directly record and encode an MP3 from your audio input device.

Basic settings

At first to be able to playback files the program needs an MP2/3 decoder. This can be either a system installed MP3 ACM Codec (XP should contain it by default) or the mpglib.dll which needs to be in the program's or in Windows' folder. The mpglib.dll (available at the homepage) makes mp3DirectCut more independent (if you don't have an ACM) and supports Layer 2. But it takes more cpu than ACM.

Switch to your prefered decoder in the Devices settings (Settings => Configure => Devices). In the Output device section you can select a Wave device and adjust the amount of frames being decoded to each play buffer between 'fast' (1 frame) and 'reliable' (8 frames). On slower machines set a higher value. For a fast response of the graphics select a lower value. The default is 4.

The program language can be adjusted at the Operation Tab (Settings => Configure => Operation). In the list select your language if present. The language files must be in a sub directory "Languages" of the mp3DirectCut folder. If no language is selected or found the program looks also into its own folder for one (!) language file. So you can also enable your language without keeping the subfolder (but then it does not appear in the list).

Navigation

As mp3DirectCut is designed to handle large files, there are many ways to reach a position:

Scrollbar
With the slider you can move along a file. The arrow buttons (or keys: Shift+Left/Right) move a single MPEG frame backwards or forward.

[<<<] [<<] [>>] [>>>] (or keys: Left/Right and Page up/down)
These buttons are user definable. You can set the amount of frames to skip back/forward in the configuration window between 10 and 10.000 for [<<<] and [>>>] and between 1 and 1.000 for [<<] [>>].

Mouse
You can directly jump to any file position by left clicking into the map area below the audio graph.

CTRL+Mouse
If you hold down the CTRL key while clicking into the audio graph the cursor jumps to the shown audio position.

[I...<<] [>>...I]
These buttons set the play cursor to the beginning or the end of the selection if present.

List Menu and [I<] [>I]
Let you choose the active edit point and set the play cursor to it's beginning.

Position field
You can enter a position by time or percentage into the edit field and apply the value by pressing Enter or Tab.

Audio editing

Editing a file or compilation of file fragments means to create different parts of audio content. Each time you cut, paste or set a cue one or more new parts will be created.

Like in other editors, editing begins by making a selection. A selection can be an audio range or only a single position. Ranges can be used to cut, copy or paste. A position selection is for creating cues or points of volume change.

Making a selection

You have one of these ways:

Buttons [Set begin] and [Set end]
These buttons set the beginning or the end of the selection to the current position.

Mouse
You can point/drag a selection by using the left and the right mouse button. How the buttons behave can be set in the preferences:
Method 1: Left button sets the beginning of the selection (by clicking or dragging), the right button sets the end.
Method 2: Left button makes a new selection and enlarges it. The right button moves beginning or end (depending on which is nearer).

Note: to make a large selection you should at first point to one end of the selection and then jump to where the other end should be and set it there. It is not possible to drag a long selection by moving the mouse over the windows boarders.

Selection field
You can enter beginning, end or length of the selection by numbers. Take care not to delete the symbols, otherwise the values cannot be read from the field correctly.

Part structure

At each edit point begins an independent audio part. Parts can even be from different audio files. Each part can have information about a volume change or whether it is a cue.

If you cut a selection the range disappears and is not longer known by the program. But an edit point remains at the cut position and you can restore the cut range every time by using the edit button.

Buttons [Cut] and [Edit]

The Cut button splits the current audio part into two parts. If there was a selection range it will be cut. If the selection had a length of zero the Cut function only splits the part. The split point can be used to create a volume change or a cue.

If a split point should work as a cue (needed e.g. for creating Cue sheets), its cue flag must be set. The program sets it automatically on creating split points or loading Cue sheets. Edit points with cue flag are shown as dotted line. To set or remove a cue flag manually, press CTRL+Q or check/uncheck 'Cue' in the part properties dialog (Edit menu).

With the Edit button you can remove existing edit points. This means that two parts will be joined. If the edit point was a cut, the removed audio range will be restored. Note: editing a point is not possible if it was created by paste. In this case the audio data between two parts is not continouus and there is nothing to restore. To remove such insertions select them and use the function 'Remove selected elements' in the Edit menu.

Edit menu: Cut, Copy, Paste

While the Cut button does not copy the cut range to the clipboard Cut and Copy from the Edit menu do. The copied information can be pasted to any new position (current or selection). Copy and Paste can handle multiple files and parts and work completely non-destructive. This means that no audio data is copied but only access informations.

Volume changes

To change the volume simply create one or more edit points (from zero length selections). Then you can directly change the gain by dragging the gray grips. Alternatively the gain of the highlighted edit point can be changed by the keys CTRL+Up/Down

Audio ranges with a modified volume are shown in the color of edit points. The gain sign of the edit point shows the volume change in dB. Note: Volume change works only with Layer 3. As the data remains encoded volume changes can only be made in a resolution of 1.5 dB steps.

To create a fade or a silence for a selection you can use the gain dialog in the Edit menu. A gain area can also be created by the Normalize function in the Edit menu.

Change or remove existing edit points

First highlight a point by moving to its position (see 'Navigation' section). After pressing [Edit] the cut range or the split point will become the selection and will be deleted (!). So after changing positions you must hit [Cut] again. More in the Edit button section above.

Prelisten and output

Normal play ist already a prelisten mode because every cut and every gain modification is played as it will be saved. In addition there are some buttons to prelisten the selection boundaries before cutting:

[=>I..] / F5 - play 2 seconds to the selection beginning
[I=>..] / F6 - play 2 seconds from the selection beginning
[..=>I] / F7 - play 2 seconds to the selection end
[..I=>] / F8 - play 2 seconds from the selection end
[=>I...I=>] / F9 - play the selection as cut (2 secs before and after)

After finishing prelisten the cursor returns to the previous position.

While normal play two of the prelisten buttons change their function to provide Fast Play. The buttons show the symbols [>> -] and [>> +] and can be used to adjust the speed of Fast Play in small steps. For faster operation it's recommended to use the keys F7 and F8.

A created audio file can either be the whole shown data ('Save all...') or only the range of the selection ('Save selection...'). You can also save multiple pieces at once with the 'Save split...' function. It creates seperate files for every range between two cues. Note: You should always check the output file(s) before deleting the original.

Pause detection

This function sets cues or cuts to gaps of definable length and level. The settings must be adjusted carefully because the results can be very different.

The Level and the Duration sliders adjust at which audio level and gap duration thresholds a pause will be detected. Offset is the number of frames at the pause end which the cut end or the cue will be shifted to the left or right. Cut whole pause means that not only a cue at the pause end will be created but a cut over the whole pause (beginning of cut slightly right shifted) if the pause is long enough. Don't use this option for creating Cue sheets!

The value of 'After a pause detection skip' can be used to speed up the detection process. If a pause is found the program jumps further the entered amount of seconds. E.g. if you know that all of the tracks of your CD image are 3 minutes or longer you could set this value to 150 seconds.

Recording

For recording an MP3 directly you need either an ACM Codec with encoding capability or the Lame Encoder DLL (available through the homepage of the Lame project). It is important to choose a base filename. Your recordings will be saved under this name. Note that there will be no query for overwriting existing files! If you select 'Add date & time' each recorded file will have a date and time stamp in its filename.

To initialize recording press [Rec]. Then you can see the audio input level on the VU meter. After pressing [Play] the file starts being written. With selected 'Append data' in the recording settings an existing file will not be deleted and you can make multiple recordings to one file. But take care not to use different bitrates or samplerates in one file.

While recording you can set up to 40 cues by pressing [Set begin]. The number and position of the last cue is shown in the range field.

The value of 'Buffer' shows how much data is waiting to be encoded by the codec. If it grows the codec is not fast enough to encode MP3 in realtime. The unencoded buffer portion should not be over 10% for more than some seconds. On modern systems it should be always 0%.

If you launch mp3DirectCut with '/rec' in the command line it will start the recording immediately with the encoding settings of your last session. You can use this option for automated recordings. See more under Command line options.

Project files and Cue Sheets

An mp3DirectCut project file (*.mpd) contains a complete edit state with every part and their volume, cut and cue informations. If you work with large files and make a lot of cuts you should frequently save your work to a project file.

Cue Sheets (*.cue) contain a link to an audio file and time indexes (cues). Cuts and gain settings cannot be saved to a Cue sheet. A Cue sheet can't even be saved if the audio file has been edited in the length at the same time. When loading a cue sheet the program reads titles and artist names and shows them in the graph area. If you split a file by using a Cue sheet you can create filenames with titles and ID3v1.1 tags for each file.

Keyboard shortcuts

Space | Play/Stop
Page up/down | Move back/forward defineable large step (<<< / >>>)
Arrow left/right | Move back/forward defineable small step (<< / >>)
Arrow up/down | Jump to beginning/end of selection
Ctrl+Left/Right | Jump to previous/next part
Ctrl+Up/Down | Change gain of current part
Shift+Left/Right | Move one frame backwards/forward
Shift+Up/Down | Zoom in/out
Delete | Simple cut
Home | Jump to track beginning
End | Jump to track end
Ctrl+P | Enter position field
Ctrl+L | Enter selection field
Ctrl+O | Open file
Ctrl+Q | Toggle Cue flag
Ctrl+S | Save Project or Cue sheet
Ctrl+F4 | Close file
F5...F9 | Prelisten modes (jump to chapter)
F7, F8 | While play: Fast Play speed (dec/inc)
F12 | Encoding settings quick access
Backspace | Margin reset

More shortcuts are shown in the tooltips and in the menus.

Command line options

Usage: mp3DirectCut.exe <filename> <option(s)> <destination>

As <filename> every file type known by mp3DirectCut is possible (MP3, MP2, Project files, Cue sheets). Usually this is for the file to be opened. In your operating system settings you can associate mp3DirectCut to one or more of these file types and with different options. Then you can open the program easily by any file of that type. It is also possible to drag files of known types over mp3DirectCut.

If you use the <filename> parameter together with /rec you can set an individual record filename that differs from the base filename of the recording settings.

The following options can be used to let the program perform an action immediately. After finnishing, the program quits. Note that special adjustments (e.g. for Normalize, Auto cue, Encoder settings) cannot be given over the command line. They must be done before in the normal program environment.

Examples

mp3DirectCut track01.mp3 /normalize /overwrite
mp3DirectCut audiobook.mp3 /autocue d:\split
mp3DirectCut /rec
mp3DirectCut other_recname.mp3 /rec

Options

/normalize | Normalizes the file up to 0 dB. Higher or lower levels cannot be set in the command line.
/autocue | Splits the given file into segments of that length set in the Auto cue feature. For the performed Auto cue and Save split operations, the current settings available on normal program usage are applied. If as <destination> an existing folder is set, the split files will be saved there.
/pausesplit | Runs the pause detector and splits the given file at all found pause positions. For the performed Pause detection and Save split operations, the current settings are applied. You can change them by normal program usage. As <destination> a folder for the split files can be set which must exist.
/save | Opens and saves the file. Simple re-save can be used to eliminate incomplete frames or unwanted headers
/overwrite | Replaces the original file. The "Keep date of source file" option is valid (it can be set in the program environment). If /overwrite is not set, the given file extension will be appended once more.
/rec | Starts recording immediately. This feature is especially made for timer recordings. In a scheduler usually you can also set a duration time after which the program will be terminated. For multiple timer recordings be sure to check 'Add date and time' or 'Append data' in the recording settings, otherwise previous recordings will be overwritten. If a filename is given before the /rec option and 'Add date and time' or 'Append data' is not (!) selected, the program records into a file of that name.

Copyright (c) 2000-2006 Martin Pesch