Mp3 & Cue files

Lately, for some unfathomable reason, a client has decided to send me the background music for a project as single huge mp3 files replete with a cue file that they made. Great. Trying to find a way to split up an mp3 file with it's corresponding .cue file on a Mac is nigh impossible.

I tried an app called cue-splitter which is great...fast simple and clean. The only problems are that it's old, the last update was 12/28/2005 and it's buggy. I've had it crash on a few .cue files and it seems to insert some distortion like a "blip" sound at the beginnings of some but not all, split mp3s.

So, two options popped into my head; One, toss the giant mp3's into FCP (Soundtrack would be overkill for this overall, I know, I know) and split it up manually and just use them there or Two, find another app to do it. I seriously thought about splitting them in FCP as a final solution but I'm all about speed (sorta) thought it would take too long manually for so many 30 sec music clips, so I looked and asked around and found a little known app that does this and it's for Mac so, yayz...no running junk in Boot Camp. It's called MP3 Trimmer and using it to split up large mp3's with .cue files is pretty simple.

1) Launch it.
2) Drag the mp3 to it.
3) Open the .cue window. (Command + E)
4) Drag the .cue file to the .cue window.
5) Hit go.

Done. Granted they're still in mp3 format but it's simple enough to convert them with QTPro or something like AudialHub. The only caveat is that you can't empty the trash of a file that's still loaded into MP3 Trimmer, you have to load in another mp3 file or quit MP3 Trimmer for that.

Mp3 Audio Files

It's okay to use .mp3 files in FCP's timeline in a pinch, (.aiff is preferred) but you'll need to render the audio (usually) first. If you don't render it you'll hear FCP beep repeatedly until you do something about it. A quick way to check to see if you need to render your audio (aside from hearing the beeps) is to look at the two thin render indicator lines at the top of your timeline. If the bottom one is red (hold your mouse over it to get a pop up with info) you need to render your audio.

Why not just render all? Well, if you have effects that are previewed (green bars or even yellow) and just want to check the audio sync or timing you can save rendertime by just rendering your audio. A quick way to do this is to tap Control + Option + R which will just render your audio and leave your video tracks untouched.

Btw, a really fast way to convert .mp3s into .aiff is to open the .mp3 in Quicktime Player, then Export them as .aiff.