How is continuous play with song cues in mixtapes handled in iTunes?

Question

The question relates to something similar to cue sheets in iTunes that from my understanding is not available. However if I were to buy a continuous play DJ mix from the iTunes store it must be handled in some other way, right?

I don't own any purchased DJ mixes from the iTunes store so I can not check this but I have a few that I have gotten from other places and it would be nice to add in song information and track cues in the mix time line. Does anyone know how Apple handles this in iTunes?

I guess that it would also apply to podcasts and such. :)

Answer 1

Jason Salaz, lost my cookie :). Yes, cue sheets are mostly (entirely?) format agnostic but their usefulness depends on the player, as it's the component that adds cue information upon playback. In case of iTunes it appears that Apple embeds this information as metadata in a m4a container.

I tried using GarageBand to do this upon your suggestion, and it created an m4a file with embedded cue data. However GarageBand does other unrelated work, like reconverting the audio, normalizing and so on. I found an audio book editor on the Appstore that may do what I want as well, or perhaps a m4a metadata editor will as well if I find one.