CutFile and JoinFile


CutFile splits a file at the bookmark positions. If the bookmarks have been placed (accurately) by AccurateBM then this will have the effect of cutting the programmes out of a single .rec file into their own .rec files (i.e. de-merging the merged recordings that might be produced by various TAPs). If the bookmarks aren't very accurate then you can adjust them using the native Toppy playback search bar and the Green and Yellow buttons (and you may find that the Bookmark [Bm] patch helps with doing this). If you run the TAP while playing back a recording you can choose to cut that file, otherwise you'll go straight to the file selector.

To make best use of the cutter you'll need the v3.8l6 or newer of DX's mei2archive (at time of writing, this is the test version) -- this will ensure that the cut parts have nice names and the header is filled in with the right programme. In this mode, if mei2archive is not available or it fails to find a matching event then the cuts parts will be named "CUT_XYZ.N.rec", where XYZ is a combination of the channel name and the start time of the original recording and N is a sequence number. Alternatively, if you press Play to select a file and "Just Cut" it, the parts will be named "FILE-CUT.N.rec", where FILE is the base of the original file. In all cases, however, the first part (usually the pre-padding) will not be renamed and the description will not be adjusted. This is partly because those will most likely be roughly correct, but primarily so that the JoinFile can put everything back to how it was before. The names of the other files that are produced are briefly displayed during cutting, and can also be found in FILE.cut, where FILE is the original filename. This file is required by:

JoinFile reverses the actions of CutFile, using the .cut file that it produces. It checks the contents of the parts and will not join arbitrary files. (If successful, the .cut file is deleted.)

CutAds and JoinAds

CutAds is a little bit like CutFile but in this case the each pair of bookmarks should mark the start and end of a section of the programme, so the first bookmark should be placed at the start of the programme. (Looking at this another way, the first bookmark is the end of the ads before the programme, and subsequent pairs of bookmarks mark the start and end of ad breaks, with an [optional] final bookmark at the start of the ad break after the end of the programme.) The ads are cut from the file into a FILE-ADS.rec file, where FILE is the original filename -- this should be a fairly small file and is probably best deleted (once you've checked the cut).

Note that this cutting is bookmark-accurate and can (as with any simplistic cutting) give appear to give cuts slightly different to that indicated by the bookmarks (dependent on the bitrate and specific details of the image data at the cut points). If you run the TAP while playing back a recording you can choose to cut that file, otherwise you'll go straight to the file selector. Also produced is a FILE.ads file containing the data needed to reverse the cutting process:

JoinAds reverses the actions of CutAds, using the .ads file that it produces. (If successful, the .ads file is deleted.)

See the Toppy.org.uk thread for more details and to provide feedback.