Split Single Lossless Audio Files To Flac Or mp3 Using A Nautilus Script

Some music players like gMusicBrowser (and many others) can't read .cue files so you may want to split those single lossless audio files into multiple flac or mp3 files.

There is a tool for that called gCue2Tracks but it didn't work that well in the test I ran today: to split to mp3 it firstly converts the files to .wav and only then to mp3 which takes a lot of time; I've tried to use it to split an .ape file to mp3 with a 320 kbps quality (disabled vbr) yet the converted mp3s were 110 kbps; and finally it fails to convert to wv which probably means it doesn't work the other way around either.

Because of the two reasons above, WebUpd8 reader CokiDVD has created a nautilus script which can split single lossless audio files (ape, flac, wavpack) by .cue file into flac or mp3 (320kbps or 192kbps). Further more, the script also adds tags to the new files so all the resulting flac or mp3 files will have the artist, album, title and genre tags set up automatically.

Install the packages required by the script

The script requires some packages to be installed to be able to split loseless audio files as well as Zenity for the GUI. Install the dependencies in Ubuntu by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:adrian-m-benson/ppa #required for a newer shntool to fix a bug with wavpack
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:flacon/ppa #required for MAC package
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install shntool cuetools flac wavpack lame mp3info zenity mac

Download and install the script

To download and "install" the script, use the following commands:

cd ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts
wget http://webupd8.googlecode.com/files/splitlossless.tar.gz
tar -xvf splitlossless.tar.gz && rm splitlossless.tar.gz
chmod +x "Split Lossless"

If you want to set it up manually, download the script from HERE.

Now to use it, simply right click a single losless audio file (.ape, .flac or .wv) and select Scripts > Split Lossless. At this point, a window will pop-up asking you to select the .cue file for that lossless audio file - select it and you can then chose the audio format in which to split the file (flac or mp3).

Thanks to CokiDVD for the script!

See also: Split APE and FLAC Files in Ubuntu and Add Tags by Cue File