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.. RST source for cuerecover(1) man page. Convert with:
..   rst2man.py cuerecover.rst > cuerecover.1
.. rst2man.py comes from the SBo development/docutils package.

.. note to self: don't forget to check the generated man and html pages
.. into git since we don't want to require our users to have rst2man.py.

.. |version| replace:: 0.2.0
.. |date| date::

==========
cuerecover
==========

------------------------------------
generate .cue file for CD image .bin
------------------------------------

:Manual section: 1
:Manual group: Urchlay
:Date: |date|
:Version: |version|

SYNOPSIS
========

cuerecover [-o output] [-s sec] [-t thresh] **bin-file** [**bin-file** ...]

DESCRIPTION
===========

cuerecover attempts to generate a usable cue sheet for CD images which
are missing their .cue (or .ccd, .mds, etc) files.

If a single .bin file is given, it's assumed to hold all the tracks (which
might only be one). If multiple .bin files are given, each one is assumed to
represent one track of the same CD image.

For data tracks, the recovered track should be correct, provided the
bin file wasn't truncated or otherwise corrupted.

For audio tracks in a single .bin file, silence detection is used to
find the split points between tracks. This means that in cases where
one track segues into another, the two tracks will be combined in the
resulting cue sheet. Also, if there are long periods of silence within
a single track, this track will be split into two or more tracks.

OPTIONS
=======

--help
             Print short usage string.

-o <file>    Write cue file to *file* rather than standard output. If
             *file* already exists, cuerecover will refuse to overwrite it,
             which makes this safer than redirecting stdout. It's customary
             for cue files to have the same filename as their bin file(s),
             with the .bin replaced by .cue, but it's not actually required.

-s <sec>     Minimum amount of silence for detecting the split point between
             two audio tracks. Argument is in seconds, and decimals
             are allowed. The default is 2, which is the standard sized
             gap between tracks in the Redbook standard and in most CD
             authoring software. 0 means to disable splitting tracks:
             all the audio tracks will be combined into one in the
             .cue sheet. This option is ignored when multiple .bin file
             arguments are given, since they're already split into tracks.

-t <thresh>  Silence threshold, 0 to 100. Default is 0. This is
             the percentage of non-zero bytes allowed in a sector for it
             to be considered silent. Sometimes audio tracks have random
             data in the pregap (before the INDEX 01), which will fool
             cuerecover into thinking there's no pregap. This option can
             help with those, but don't set it too high. This option is ignored
             when multiple .bin file arguments are given, since they're already
             split into tracks.

-v           Verbose mode. Prints (on stderr) some extra messages about what
             cuerecover is doing. Probably only of interest to the author.

Always include a space between an option and its argument (e.g. **-s 1**, not **-s1**).

NOTES
=====

cuerecover works a lot better when it's reading a split image (one file
per track).

When reading a monolithic image (multiple tracks the same file),
cuerecover has to make some assumptions. These are usually valid, but
should be mentioned here:

- The disc image is a single session. Actually multisession discs might
  work too, but I have no examples to test with. If you're dealing with
  an image of a commercial release (a game, probably), it'll be single
  session.

- The tracks are all MODE1 (data), MODE2 (also data, usually video CDs) or
  CD-DA (regular CD audio). Extended format CDs like XA or CD+I are not
  supported, though you might still get listenable audio tracks from them.

- If there's a data track, it will be the only data track, and it will be
  track 1. This is almost always the case, since most operating systems
  from the CD-ROM era (and even modern ones) don't provide access to
  data tracks that aren't the first track on the disc.

- If there's a data track, it's a raw image (2352 bytes per sector, includes
  the sync pulse, address, CRC, ECC, etc). If the data track was stored as
  'cooked' data (2048 bytes/sector, MODE1/2048 in the original .cue
  file), it'll be treated as an audio track (or more likely 20 or 30
  audio tracks), and you'll get a warning that it looks like 'cooked'
  data. You can check for this by trying to mount the .bin file as an
  ISO or HFS image: if it mounts, the first track is 'cooked'.

- If a data track gets mis-identified as a file, it'll be obvious if
  you use the .cue sheet to extract the image into files: you'll
  probably get way too many tracks, since most filesystem images have
  long stretches of "silence" (long runs of zeroes). If you try to listen
  to these, you'll notice that ISO images don't sound musical at all!
  The last few tracks will be the largest, and these will be valid audio,
  if there were any audio tracks.

- Audio tracks are separated by at least 2 seconds of silence (or whatever
  you set -s to). If not, there's no way to detect where one track ends
  and the next begins, so they'll get merged together.

- In the best case scenario, cuerecover will generate *a* cue file, which
  will be valid... but it may not match the original (missing) one
  exactly. This is because cuerecover has to look for silent sections
  of the image and use those as split points for the tracks. If there's
  a 3-second silent section between tracks 2 and 3, is that 1 second of
  silence at the end of track 2 and 2 seconds of silence at the start of
  track 3, or vice versa, or 1.5 seconds each, or...?

.. other sections we might want, uncomment as needed.

.. FILES
.. =====

.. ENVIRONMENT
.. ===========

EXIT STATUS
===========

As usual, 0 for success, non-zero for failure.

.. BUGS
.. ====

.. EXAMPLES
.. ========

AUTHOR
======

cuerecover was written by B. Watson <yalhcru@gmail.com> and
released under the WTFPL: Do WTF you want with this.

SEE ALSO
========

miragextract(1)

The manual for GNU ccd2cue(1) has useful information on the .cue
file format:

  https://www.gnu.org/software/ccd2cue/manual/html_node/CUE-sheet-format.html

More information on the CD-ROM data formats:

  https://wiki.osdev.org/User:Combuster/CDRom_BS
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD-ROM