v3.0.0

2024-06-12 – v3.0.0

New feature

• Adjustable minimum silence length for blank skipping, i.e., cueing out early when silence is found in the track, for instance from a long pause and "hidden tracks".
• A much requested feature many have been waiting for (including myself)!
• This new function adds almost no extra CPU load.
• Longer silent parts and "hidden tracks" will be detected accurately, without many false triggers, and the track cued out early, with a perfect transition.
• Long tail handling, overlay point detection (next song start) and fading stay active as before—they just work from the new cue-out point.
• The new cue-out point will be set at the beginning of the specified and detected silent part. We don’t want to produce "dead air", after all.
• cue_file still supports the -b/--blankskip option, which will use a default of 2.5 seconds minimum silence duration.
• Note: If using only -b/--blankskip without a value, you should use it as the last parameter and then add a -- before the filename, to signify "end of parameters". This is standard syntax and you probably know it already from other programs.
  Example:

  $ cue_file -kfwrb -- "Nirvana - Something in the Way _ Endless, Nameless.mp3"
  

• You can add the desired duration after -b/--blankskip in seconds, it is a new optional parameter.
  Example:

  $ cue_file -k -f -w -r -b 5.0 "Nirvana - Something in the Way _ Endless, Nameless.mp3"
  

• In Liquidsoap/AzuraCast, you can use this setting which defaults to zero (0.00) and means "disabled":

  settings.autocue.cue_file.blankskip := 0.0
  

  Don’t forget to change this setting if you used true or false before!

Recommendation

• I recommend not to use this feature on jingles, dry sweepers or liners, advertisements and podcast episodes. Especially spoken text can contain some pauses which might trigger an early cue-out.
• Nobody wants a podcast episode to end in the middle, or even risk losing ad revenue!
• You can easily prevent this and turn off blank skipping
  • by tagging a file with the liq_blankskip tag set to 0.00,
  • by not using cue_file’s -b/--blankskip option when writing tags,
  • by prefixing annotate:liq_blankskip=0.00 on playlists.
  • An annotation has precedence over a file tag.
• In some special cases we automatically turn off blank skipping:
  • SAM Broadcaster: Song category is not "Song" (S). For all other categories like News (N), Jingles (J), Ads (A), etc. We look for the songtype tag here. This is useful if you use a common music library, or have files that have been tagged using SAM categories.
  • AzuraCast: Hide Metadata from Listeners ("Jingle Mode") is selected for a playlist. This sets a jingle_mode=true annotation we honor.

Breaking Changes

• liq_blankskip is now a float, not a boolean anymore!
• Re-tagging recommended! Sorry for that, but I hope the new functionality will outweigh the effort.
• Both cue_file and autocue.cue_file.liq will handle the "old" tags gracefully, using 0.00 for former false and your setting or the default of 2.50 s for former true.
• 0.00 (zero) now means "blankskip disabled".