Many bug fixes went into this update:

[clinton/abcde.git] / README

ABCDE
=====

abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that
grabs tracks off a CD, encodes them to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or
MPP/MP+(Musepack) format, and tags them, all in one go.

Your finished Ogg/MP3/FLAC/Speex/MPP's are, by default, stored in a subdirectory 
of the current directory (named after the artist) with a filename based on the
track title. Spaces are replaced by underscores, and apostrophes and
control codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a
hyphen. The end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg
This filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in
your abcde.conf to change it.

Need to go through an HTTP proxy for CDDB access? No problem, just export
your http_proxy variable first so wget/fetch/curl can see it.

You already store CDDB entries for your CD collection on your hard disk? Piece
of cake. Just edit CDDBLOCALDIR to point to the repository and give abcde the 
"-L" flag to make use of it.

Low on disk space? abcde has different algorithms to schedule ripping and
encoding - to optimize for disk conservation, use -l.

abcde can also take advantage of SMP systems, just like make. Try
'abcde -j 2' - it'll run two encoder jobs while it rips the next track.

abcde now uses FreeDB by default. To use a different FreeDB mirror or
another CDDB service, change the CDDBURL option in your abcde.conf.

Frustrated that you can't use the CPU power on Machine A sitting right
next to Machine B with the fast cdrom drive? Now you don't have to be -
Run distmp3host (included in distmp3) on Machine A, and then run
abcde -r MachineA from Machine B (where "MachineA" is a dns name or IP
address). Use this in combination with '-j 0' to shift all encoding off the
local machine.

You do not have internet connection, or just feel with free time to write 
down all the song names and artists instead of using CDDB? Use -n and edit
the template.

To make abcde 2.x work more like 1.x, put these options in your abcde.conf:

INTERACTIVE=n
OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
ID3TAGV=1

NOTICE: abcde needs cd-discid. Grab it from:
http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/

MAJOR CHANGES
=============
Changes in 2.2-pre2:

* Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from 
  corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released
  under the GPL...
* New "-s <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at 
  a given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
* Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
  erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
  one.

Changes in 2.2-pre1:

* cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of 
  valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
* Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A 
  template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".

New options in 2.1.19:

* ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
  single file with all the tracks from the CD.
  
Changes in 2.1.18:

* CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
  option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force
  the use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one
  can use the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.

New options in 2.1.16:

* -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can 
  set the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line.
  This option can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the
  built-in cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
* Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
  One can use it to close the CD drive.
* -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some 
  players insist on having those to work properly with playlists.

New options in 2.1.15:

* -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
* -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.

New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:

* CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
* Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
  set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
* If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
  CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).

Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:

* Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
* A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
  option.
  
Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:

* KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".

Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:

* Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.

Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:

* WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
  program.
* KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
  kept.
* CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
* DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.

Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:

* -b use batch processing. It uses normalize to adjust the volume of the
  songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
  for mp3+lame combination.
* a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
* -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
  Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
* OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1
  abcde implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at
  the end of the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the 
  PLAYLISTFORMAT and OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures
  and playlist names for each of the output formats selected.
* DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not 
  supplied by the CDDB server, it can be added.

Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:

* -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
  and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
  use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
* The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
  if you still want to output mp3's.
* -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
* -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
  Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
* -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
  ACTIONS=playlist,clean
* -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
  ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
* cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
  'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
* ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
* FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.


REQUIREMENTS
============

abcde requires the following backend tools to work:

* An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
* An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
  takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
  will work.
  You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
  You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
  You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
  You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
    http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
* FLAC encoder (flac) or:
* Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
* MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc)
* normalize for volume normalization.
* CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility,
* Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from,
* Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
* cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
  It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
* An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
* id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
* id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/
* (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
  You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html

Potential problems:

Having trouble getting cdparanoia to read from your drive as a user?
Add yourself to the cdrom group, change the permissions on your cdrom device
to 660, and if you have a SCSI cdrom drive, check the permissions on
/dev/sg* as well.

Running out of disk space for .wav files but don't want to use -l? Put them
in a different location by adding WAVOUTPUTDIR=/some/other/path to your
/etc/abcde.conf or ~/.abcde.conf.

If abcde seems to be ignoring your configuration options or not running
commands such as the encoder, you may have misquoted something. Config
options such as the following do not work:

LAMEOPTS=-h -k

Try this instead:

LAMEOPTS='-h -k'

Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
been actively used.
The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.

Archives of the old list are publically available at:
http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html

Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php
Abcde's new homepage will be at http://abcde.hispalinux.es/.
Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/.
--
Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>