home | help 
CUTMP3(1)			Utility Commands		       CUTMP3(1)

NAME
     cutmp3 - a fast and leightweight mp3 editor

SYNOPSIS
     cutmp3  [-i  <file>]  [-O	<file>]  [-a  <startpoint>]  [-b <endpoint>] [-f
     <timetable>] [-o <output_prefix>] [-I <file> [-F]] [-d 2] [-s <factor>]  -c
     -C -k -q

DESCRIPTION
     Cutmp3 is a small and fast command line MP3 editor. It lets you select sec-
     tions  of an MP3 interactively or via a timetable and save them to separate
     files without quality loss. It uses mpg123 for playback and works with  VBR
     files  and even with files bigger than 2GB. Other features are configurable
     silence seeking and ID3 tag seeking,  which  are  useful  for  concatenated
     mp3s.

OPTIONS
     -i <file>
	    input file to edit

     -O <file>
	    forced output filename

     -o <output_prefix>
	    prefix of generated output filename
	    (e.g. <output_prefix>0001.mp3, <output_prefix>0002.mp3, ...)

     -a <mm:ss.xx>
	    starting position of selection to write to new file

     -b <mm:ss.xx>
	    end position of selection to write to new file

     -f <timetable_file>
	    use a timetable to extract several sequences from a given file.
	    The timetable must have the following format:
	    "<start_position> <end_position>" e.g.:

	    0:01 1:00
	    11:15 19:33
	    01:01.34 02:39.78
	    1:0 -0:05

	    Negative  values  mean distance from the end of file.  Note that the
	    options [-a] and [-b] override a given timetable.

     -q quiet mode
	    Switch on quiet mode, cutmp3 won't make any sound, useful for debug-
	    ging and commands using a  pipe  like:  "echo  7a9bsq  |  cutmp3  -i
	    file.mp3"

     -c copy metadata
	    Copies  metadata  in  non-interactive  mode. Useful to keep ID3 tags
	    when using -a -b or -f.

     -C do not copy metadata
	    Prevents copying any metadata.

     -k keep old filename
	    Keeps old filename and full path and appends 0001.mp3, etc.

     -s maximum silence length factor
	    Normally cutmp3 stops when the silence found is longer than 15 times
	    the minimum silence length. [-s] changes this factor. 0 means infin-
	    ity.

     -d 2   use the second soundcard (/dev/dsp1)

KEYBOARD CONTROL
     rewind with the following keys [1/2/3/4/5]
     move forward with the following keys [6/7/8/9/0]
     [0] means 10mins forward, [9] is 1min forward, [8] is 10secs  forward,  [7]
     is  1sec  forward	and [6] is 1/10sec forward. Keys [1] to [5] go symmetri-
     cally back (so [1] means 10mins back). For highest precision [,] goes  back
     one  frame and [.] goes one frame forward. After any of these keys you will
     hear the sound at this position for one second. When you are at the  start-
     ing  position  of your part of interest, press the key [a]. When you are at
     the last position of your part of interest, press the  key  [b]  (What  you
     hear after [b] will then be the last second inside the new file). By press-
     ing [s] the resulting file will be written to result0001.mp3. If it already
     exists,  cutmp3  will increase the number to result0002.mp3, result0003.mp3
     and so on.

     You can change the length of playback by pressing [N] and [M].

     You can seek to the end of the next silence by pressing [p] (for pause)  or
     to  its  beginning  by pressing [P]. By default the silence should last for
     1000 milliseconds, which is one second, and the maximum volume during  this
     second is the minimum: 1 (whatever that is in dB).

     You can change:

     - the length of the silence by pressing [n] or [m] and
     - the maximum volume during this silence by pressing [+] or [-].

     These values will be saved to ~/.cutmp3rc by pressing [S].

     You  can  seek  to the next ID3 tag by pressing [T]. This is useful in case
     someone has  merged  several  mp3s  into  one  file  without  removing  the
     ID3-tags.

     For other useful keycodes type [h] in interactive mode.

     Please note that cutmp3 only accepts one inputfile, so using wildcards like
     [?]   or  [*]  in filenames will result in editing only the first file that
     matches.

EXAMPLES
     1) The resulting files  will  be  written	to  blah0001.mp3,  blah0002.mp3,
     blah0003.mp3 and so on:

	 cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -o blah

     2) If you only want to cut a file once and you know the times for start and
     the end, you type:

	 cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -a 0:37 -b 1:25

     and  cutmp3  will write the passage of file.mp3 starting at 0:37 and ending
     at 1:25 to blah01.mp3

     3) If you want to cut a file more often, you need to create  a  file  which
     contains a timetable and type (Please read README.timetable for details):

	 cutmp3 -i file.mp3 -f name_of_the_timetablefile

     4)  Only  print total number of frames, sampling frequency, number of chan-
     nels, average bitrate, MPEG version and total time in milliseconds, in this
     order:

	 cutmp3 -F -I file.mp3

     5) If you want to clean an MP3 from any data that is not  sound,  just  use
     (Cutting in interactive mode does _not_ remove invalid data!):

	 cutmp3 -i infile.mp3 -a 0:0 -b 99999:0

ABOUT
     cutmp3 was written by Jochen Puchalla <mail at puchalla-online dot de>
     this manpage was written by Marc O. Gloor <mgloor at fhzh dot ch>

cutmp3 4.0			   5 Apr 2023			       CUTMP3(1)
home | help