| 1 | |
| 2 | Q. I am using MacOSX and I am having problems to use abcde. |
| 3 | A. Well, I have a Mac, but I use linux on it. I have not been able to find |
| 4 | a way to make it work there, since I do not have the development tools |
| 5 | installed. I have placed a basic support, but some user reports are just |
| 6 | complaining about abcde not encoding the ripped tracks, as if |
| 7 | cdda2wav/cdparanoia/cddafs would never end reading them. If you have such |
| 8 | a system and experience problems, please, report them, and I will try to |
| 9 | work them out with your help. |
| 10 | |
| 11 | Q. I would like to give the trackname and the artist_name directly to the |
| 12 | encoder (in my case oggenc), but found no documentation. |
| 13 | A. That is not possible, since abcde gets the information from CDDB database. |
| 14 | You can create a template and fill it with the option "-n". |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Q. What formats can I encode my music to? |
| 17 | A. As for version 2.2, abcde includes support for MP3, Ogg/Vorbis, |
| 18 | Ogg/Speex, Flac and MPP/MP+(Musepack). |
| 19 | |
| 20 | Q. I have a CD with a data track, and abcde complaints it cannot read/encode |
| 21 | it. |
| 22 | A. It is not easy to find a data track on a CD. Right now, I can only think |
| 23 | of getting the track info from CDDB and ask the user for continuing should |
| 24 | a "data" track name is found. But the solution is far from been optimal. |
| 25 | For now, if you find a "data" track and you know the number, restart abcde |
| 26 | specifying the tracks to be encoded, leaving out the data one. |
| 27 | Version 2.2 includes some checkings with cdparanoia, to try to get this |
| 28 | right. |
| 29 | |
| 30 | Q. How can I separate the different output files I get using multiple-output |
| 31 | support? |
| 32 | A. Use the OUTPUT variable in PLAYLISTFORMAT and OUTPUTFORMAT. It holds the |
| 33 | different output file types you passed to abcde (i.e., ogg, mp3, flac) |
| 34 | during playlist creation and file/directory creation. |
| 35 | |
| 36 | Q. I keep on getting files with ".ogg.ogg" extension. What am I doing wrong? |
| 37 | A. The code for multiple-output adds automatically the extension of the |
| 38 | different outputs you select with the "-o" extension (or with OUTPUTTYPE |
| 39 | variable). Erase the ".${OUTPUTTYPE}" part from the OUTPUTFORMAT variable |
| 40 | in /etc/abcde.conf or ~/.abcde.conf |
| 41 | |
| 42 | Q. I use Debian/RedHat/(put your Unix flavour here) and MP3 encoding is not |
| 43 | working. What am I doing wrong? |
| 44 | A. Since MP3 is considered non-free (you get it for free, but hardware players |
| 45 | and net broadcasters have to pay license fees), some release engineering |
| 46 | groups and release management teams have decided not to provide MP3 encoding |
| 47 | tools. |
| 48 | These distributions or operative systems have decided to use Ogg/Vorbis as |
| 49 | the default encoding format, since it contains no (known) patent claims |
| 50 | and they are (supposed to be) completely Free (released under a BSD-like |
| 51 | license). |
| 52 | However, there is no strong (at the moment) hardware support, although |
| 53 | some groups and companies are strongly working on getting it, real soon |
| 54 | now. For that reason some people prefer to encode to MP3. |
| 55 | |
| 56 | UPDATE *** UPDATE |
| 57 | There are at least 3 known brands already selling Ogg/Vorbis portable |
| 58 | players: Rio, iRiver and Neuros. |
| 59 | Go buy one and you have no more reasons to use MP3. |
| 60 | |
| 61 | If you are among those individuals, you might need to add support for MP3 |
| 62 | encoding to your system: |
| 63 | Debian : check http://marillat.free.fr to install lame in your system. |
| 64 | others prefer bladeenc. Check www.apt-get.org or google. |
| 65 | RedHat : search on rpmfind.net |
| 66 | FreeBSD: By default includes LAME support. |
| 67 | OpenBSD: Available by specifying you want to install the port with LAME |
| 68 | support, or by just installing it later from the ports tree. |
| 69 | NetBSD : Available in pkgsrc. |
| 70 | |
| 71 | Others : Please, help me here. |
| 72 | |
| 73 | Q. I have modified some of the options, and now CDDB has stopped working. |
| 74 | A. Check that you have modified everything in the right way. For instance, if |
| 75 | you modify the HTTPGET program you might want to set some options of your |
| 76 | own. If you use the predefined ones (wget, curl and fetch) abcde will try |
| 77 | to use some defaults. Keep in mind that the output should go to the output |
| 78 | as standard output, to be saved in a file for later use. |
| 79 | |
| 80 | Q. My hardware player (put it here) does not recognize the playlists created |
| 81 | with abcde. What I am doing wrong? |
| 82 | A. Try using "-m" when creating the playlists, or setting DOSPLAYLIST as an |
| 83 | option in the config file. |
| 84 | |
| 85 | Q. I am requested to have eject when setting the speed although I do not use |
| 86 | for anything. |
| 87 | A. If you do not use cdparanoia, eject is used for setting the speed of the |
| 88 | cdrom drive. You can substitute it for "setcd" with "-x" as the argument, |
| 89 | but you have to install it manually (setcd is, at least, available in |
| 90 | Debian). |
| 91 | Another way to get the same results is using the pre_read function, defined |
| 92 | in your /etc/abcde.conf file. |
| 93 | |
| 94 | Q. Huh! Why is MPPENCODER (with MPP) and .mpc the extension? |
| 95 | A. Dunno. You must ask the guys who created and defined the format. The |
| 96 | standard is MPEGplus (MPP/MP+) but the files use .mpc extension. |
| 97 | |
| 98 | Q. I want the new *put the newest and coolest codec there* format to be |
| 99 | supported by abcde. Abcde is so cool but i want to encode also to this |
| 100 | new format... |
| 101 | A. Patches are welcome! ;) |
| 102 | No, seriously, if the format is usable, available for Linux and open |
| 103 | source/free software, it should be fairly easy to integrate. Support for |
| 104 | AAC (m4p) should be the next one to be introduced. |
| 105 | |
| 106 | Q. (Thanks to Amaya) Where are those options and settings defined? Why dont |
| 107 | you include a proper abcde.conf as an example? |
| 108 | A. I do. It should be installed under /etc/abcde.conf and contains more or |
| 109 | less all the defaults abcde uses. You can use $(HOME)/.abcde.conf to |
| 110 | override those defaults. |
| 111 | |
| 112 | OBSOLETE |
| 113 | -------- |
| 114 | Q. I set KEEPWAVS to "y" but abcde insists on erasing my directory, along |
| 115 | with the wav tracks. What I am doing wrong? |
| 116 | A. The default action set includes clean, which cleans the temp directory, |
| 117 | if nothing goes wrong. Take the "clean" out from the action list and you |
| 118 | are done. |
| 119 | UPDATE: KEEPWAVS unselects now the clean action. |