The Cue/EOM sub-tab is where you decide how each song hands off to the next one. Every song can get one of two kinds of mark, an EOM or a Cue, but never both. Setting one clears the other.
Either way, the mark belongs to the song that's ending, not the one that's starting, and it doesn't trim anything off the start of the next song. A song with no mark at all gets AutoCast's standard 1-second overlap.
Set these well and your segues will sound like they were planned by a human. Set them poorly and, well — that's what this tab is for.
Got a few thousand songs and no burning desire to mark every one by ear? AutoCue, the third sub-tab on Transitions, can mark every unmarked song in your Music folder (and its subfolders) for you, choosing a Cue for cold endings and an EOM for fades. You can fine-tune any of them right here afterward, and your hand-set marks always win.
The main display is a black waveform canvas showing two tracks at once, side by side:
Two lines float over the waveforms:
A song with no mark shows no colored line; the view centers on the very end of Song A instead.
Song A loads automatically when you select a single song in the middle pane. The waveform draws and the playhead parks near the end of the song, ready to go. Nothing plays until you press Space. How near the end is set by Playback offset in Preferences: anywhere from 1 to 30 seconds, and the default is 8.
To load Song B — the "test-with" track — click Load test-with song (bottom-right, under the canvas) and pick any audio file, or just drag a file straight onto the waveform. Pick something representative of what typically follows this type of song. It doesn't have to be the exact next song in any particular log; you just want to hear how the transition sounds in context. Librarian remembers it, from song to song and the next time you open Librarian.
It helps to have a small set of "test-with" songs that represent different types of intros — a cold start, a fade-in, a song that starts with a beat, one that starts with vocals. Using the same few test-with songs consistently makes your Cue and EOM settings more uniform across the library.
Marking a whole folder? Use the ↑ and ↓ arrow keys to step to the previous or next song in the list without leaving the tab. Each new song loads, parked near its end, ready for another Space.
Press Space to start playback. Listen to the transition. When you hear the right moment to mark, press the key:
The mark appears immediately, and the view re-centers on it. E and C only work while Song A is playing and before the test-with song kicks in; the rest of the time they do nothing.
Right after you press E or C, playback jumps back 3 seconds and keeps going, so you hear your new transition right away. Want the mark a touch earlier? Press the key again before Song B comes in. Want it later? Once playback reaches the mark, Song B takes over and E and C stop working, so press Escape to clear the mark first, then play past the old spot and mark it again.
Press Space again to stop. The playhead jumps back to where you last started playing, so another Space replays the same stretch.
Press Escape to erase this song's mark (EOM or Cue) and save that right away. The song goes back to the standard 1-second overlap, and the playhead stays where it is. The song also counts as unmarked again, so AutoCue's next Run will mark it; to keep a particular ending, set it with E or C instead.
What the preview plays. When Song A reaches the mark, the test-with song starts from its very beginning. With an EOM, Song A fades out over 3 seconds; with a Cue, it keeps playing at full volume. That's close to what AutoCast does on air, with a few small differences: the preview always fades over 3 seconds (AutoCast uses your station's EOM fade time), skips the fade for an EOM of 3 seconds or less, and, for a song with no mark, waits for Song A to end completely instead of overlapping by 1 second. If no test-with song is loaded, you'll just hear Song A.
Space, E, C and Escape work on most other tabs too, as long as you aren't typing in a field. While you're previewing a song there, a stray E or C drops a mark wherever the song happens to be, and Escape clears its mark (or its Ramp point instead, if Ramp was the last Transitions sub-tab you used). If in doubt, come back here and check the song's waveform.
The zoom slider below the waveform canvas lets you zoom in for more precise work. You can also zoom by scrolling (mouse wheel or two-finger swipe) over the waveform. Zoomed all the way in, a single second spreads across hundreds of pixels, so you can see exactly where the ending falls — the moment that last guitar chord fades out, rather than somewhere in the general neighborhood of it — and click the playhead just before it. Marks are saved to the nearest tenth of a second.
Click anywhere on the cyan waveform to the left of the mark to move the playhead there. If it's playing, it carries on from the new spot. Marks can't be dragged; to move one, use E, C and Escape as described above.
Clicking to the right of the mark, on the orange waveform, plays just the test-with song from that point (if you're stopped, press Space to start it), which is handy for checking its intro.
The playhead only parks near the end if you're already on the Transitions tab when you pick the song; otherwise it starts at the top of the song. Just click on the cyan waveform a few seconds before the end to put it where you want it.
Your mark is saved the instant you press E or C (and the instant you press Escape to clear it). There's no Save button to click, and nothing waits until you change songs. Librarian writes it straight to library.tsv. After E or C, the small transition icon beside the song in the song list updates to show it's marked; after Escape that icon can lag behind, so go by the waveform, where the colored line disappears right away.
For extra peace of mind, every save also rotates a set of five backup copies (library_backup_1.tsv through library_backup_5.tsv) kept next to library.tsv.
If Song A can't be opened — because the audio data is damaged or the file is missing from disk — its cyan waveform disappears, its name at the top-left of the canvas turns red with ⚠ Corrupted audio file (even when the file is simply missing), the speaker icon flashes red, and the status bar suggests replacing the file. Pressing Space just flashes the speaker red again. The file needs to be located or repaired before you can set transition points for it. Bad File Detection can help you track down others like it.
EOM and Cue are stored in seconds counted back from the end of the file, to one decimal place. On a 3:30 (210-second) song where you want the next song to start at 3:22, the EOM is 8.0, not 202. E and C blank the other field for you (Escape sets both to 0). You can also type a value into the EOM or Cue field in the Edit Attributes sub-tab if you know the exact time: use seconds from the end, and fill in only one of the two.