
                  ................................


                             WAVSPLIT 1.2.1
                     splits wavfiles into tracks
                         licensed under GPL
                      http://www.fomalhaut.de
                          Nov 1999 
                          Sep 2000
                          Mar 2003
                          April 2004
                          October 2004
                          November 2004
                          

                  ................................

Based on wavplay by Warren W. Gay and 
         gsplit by the Free Software Foundation
Written by Tobias Weihmann (tobias@fomalhaut.de)
Updated to V1.2.1 by Alan Fitch (apfitch@ieee.org)

INTRODUCTION / OVERVIEW

This small program splits large wav files at given time positions. 
This is very handy if you want to transfer your gramophone records 
to CDs. To find out split positions you can use any Wav player or 
editor with a time display. You'll get the splitting done much faster 
and reliably than with complex algorithms, which split your a capella 
songs in pieces and won't process live albums. 


INSTALLATION

After unpacking the tarball issue the command

	make && make install

to start the compilation process and copy the program to /usr/local/bin,
and the man pages to /usr/share/man/man1.
(If you don't have a root account, simply issue "make" and copy the tool
manually to the desired location)

You can alter the destinations by editing the variables BIN and MAN in 
the Makefile.

Note for all 64-bit systems: when your `long'-type vars are 64 bit, .wav
headers are not read/written correctly (=bug). If you replace every `long'
with an `int' (or other 32-bit type), everything should be fine. 

To run WavSplit, issue the command

	wavsplit WAV-FILE mm:ss [mm:ss] [mm:ss]...

For example,

	wavsplit firstrecord.wav 5:23 8:10

will create a folder, containing three files. '01.wav' containing 
the track from 0:00 to 5:23, '02.wav' containing the track between 
5:23 and 8:10 and the '03.wav' containg the rest of the data. The 
original file is not touched.

You can also specify splits in just seconds, e.g.

  wavsplit firstrecord.wav 323 490
  
This is handy if your wave editor reports times in seconds. The seconds
values may be specified with a decimal place, e.g.

  wavsplit firstrecord.wav 323.5 490.15
  
See the help for also specifying times using hours, and frames. To get
help type 

   wavsplit

or
   wavsplit -h
   
or
   wavsplit --help
   

To find out the split positions use a wav player with a time display,
like Xmms, or an editor such as Audacity. Each time you find a new track,
add the split position to the WavSplit on the commandline.

Of course, you can also save time locating the exact split positions 
by using the length information printed on the record cover.

From version 1.2.0, you can split using track times rather than absolute
split positions. For instance 

  wavsplit firstrecord.wav --tracktimes 323.5 490.15

would split at 323.5 seconds, and 323.5+490.5 seconds - the split point
accumulates the length of the tracks up to that point. In this mode, 
the splits are really track lengths, and of course do not necessarily 
have to have ascending values. For instance 

  wavsplit firstrecord.wav --tracktimes 323.5 211.1
  
would be OK, but 

  wavsplit firstrecord.wav 323.5 211.1

would result in an error as the split points should be in ascending order.


IMPORTANT

Tested with standard 44100Hz 16 Bit Stereo WAVs, but should work for
other WAVs, too. Tested on Suse Linux 6.3 for Intel, and on RedHat
7.3 and 9 for Intel. Please tell me if WavSplit works or does not work on
other systems.


QUESTIONS 

Q: There are programs (like GramoFile) which autodetect the tracks. Isn't
this better?
A: None of them can split live albums. Also, even though they use complex
algorithms, it often happens they are wrong, especially if there are pau-
ses within the tracks (most often in songs without background instruments)
GramoFile, while being a very powerful program, was very slow compared to
simple WavSplit on my good old P200.

Q: There are GUI programs for that.
A: Even though there are some wave editors, which don't coredump when
trying to open a 100 MB file, loading, displaying and saving files of
this size takes some time. Broadcast is relatively fast, but extracting
songs is a pain. First I wanted to writer a GUI splitter but I soon
noticed how important it is to have a fluent zoomable and scollable 
display or the user will get lost in the chaotic waveforms. I did not 
want to spend my time writting a professional music editor, but listening
to my gramophone records from CD. WavSplit is a quick and dirty hack, but
it works - fast.

Q: Why don't you use the CD TOC (Table of Contents)?
A: You won't have immediate verification and you can't create MP3s without
rereading the audio data from the CD.


DEVELOPERS

Project homepage at Sourceforge: http://wavsplit.sourceforge.net
Anonymous CVS available


CONTACT / DOWNLOAD

See the eMail address and URL above. On my homepage you will also find
an interview with the lead programmer of the legendary C64 game Summer
Games and a German Tutorial on building an MP3 player into your car.

Bug reports, fixes and additions welcome. However, WavSplit is a one
time hack, not an ongoing project of mine.


For information on WavRen please have a look at README.wavren.
