| 1 | ABCDE |
| 2 | ===== |
| 3 | |
| 4 | abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that |
| 5 | grabs tracks off a CD, encodes them to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or |
| 6 | MPP/MP+(Musepack) format, and tags them, all in one go. |
| 7 | |
| 8 | Your finished Ogg/MP3/FLAC/Speex/MPP's are, by default, stored in a subdirectory |
| 9 | of the current directory (named after the artist) with a filename based on the |
| 10 | track title. Spaces are replaced by underscores, and apostrophes and |
| 11 | control codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a |
| 12 | hyphen. The end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg |
| 13 | This filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in |
| 14 | your abcde.conf to change it. |
| 15 | |
| 16 | Need to go through an HTTP proxy for CDDB access? No problem, just export |
| 17 | your http_proxy variable first so wget/fetch/curl can see it. |
| 18 | |
| 19 | You already store CDDB entries for your CD collection on your hard disk? Piece |
| 20 | of cake. Just edit CDDBLOCALDIR to point to the repository and give abcde the |
| 21 | "-L" flag to make use of it. |
| 22 | |
| 23 | Low on disk space? abcde has different algorithms to schedule ripping and |
| 24 | encoding - to optimize for disk conservation, use -l. |
| 25 | |
| 26 | abcde can also take advantage of SMP systems, just like make. Try |
| 27 | 'abcde -j 2' - it'll run two encoder jobs while it rips the next track. |
| 28 | |
| 29 | abcde now uses FreeDB by default. To use a different FreeDB mirror or |
| 30 | another CDDB service, change the CDDBURL option in your abcde.conf. |
| 31 | |
| 32 | Frustrated that you can't use the CPU power on Machine A sitting right |
| 33 | next to Machine B with the fast cdrom drive? Now you don't have to be - |
| 34 | Run distmp3host (included in distmp3) on Machine A, and then run |
| 35 | abcde -r MachineA from Machine B (where "MachineA" is a dns name or IP |
| 36 | address). Use this in combination with '-j 0' to shift all encoding off the |
| 37 | local machine. |
| 38 | |
| 39 | You do not have internet connection, or just feel with free time to write |
| 40 | down all the song names and artists instead of using CDDB? Use -n and edit |
| 41 | the template. |
| 42 | |
| 43 | To make abcde 2.x work more like 1.x, put these options in your abcde.conf: |
| 44 | |
| 45 | INTERACTIVE=n |
| 46 | OUTPUTTYPE=mp3 |
| 47 | ID3TAGV=1 |
| 48 | |
| 49 | NOTICE: abcde needs cd-discid. Grab it from: |
| 50 | http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/ |
| 51 | |
| 52 | MAJOR CHANGES |
| 53 | ============= |
| 54 | Changes in 2.2-pre2: |
| 55 | |
| 56 | * Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from |
| 57 | corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released |
| 58 | under the GPL... |
| 59 | * New "-s <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at |
| 60 | a given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD. |
| 61 | |
| 62 | Changes in 2.2-pre1: |
| 63 | |
| 64 | * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of |
| 65 | valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results. |
| 66 | * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A |
| 67 | template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y". |
| 68 | |
| 69 | New options in 2.1.19: |
| 70 | |
| 71 | * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a |
| 72 | single file with all the tracks from the CD. |
| 73 | |
| 74 | Changes in 2.1.18: |
| 75 | |
| 76 | * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in |
| 77 | option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force |
| 78 | the use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one |
| 79 | can use the pre_read function to set the speed with other program. |
| 80 | |
| 81 | New options in 2.1.16: |
| 82 | |
| 83 | * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can |
| 84 | set the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line. |
| 85 | This option can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the |
| 86 | built-in cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it. |
| 87 | * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf |
| 88 | One can use it to close the CD drive. |
| 89 | * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some |
| 90 | players insist on having those to work properly with playlists. |
| 91 | |
| 92 | New options in 2.1.15: |
| 93 | |
| 94 | * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries. |
| 95 | * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits. |
| 96 | |
| 97 | New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13: |
| 98 | |
| 99 | * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices. |
| 100 | * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can |
| 101 | set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file). |
| 102 | * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under |
| 103 | CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb). |
| 104 | |
| 105 | Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10: |
| 106 | |
| 107 | * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works. |
| 108 | * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET |
| 109 | option. |
| 110 | |
| 111 | Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9: |
| 112 | |
| 113 | * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no". |
| 114 | |
| 115 | Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5: |
| 116 | |
| 117 | * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance. |
| 118 | |
| 119 | Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3: |
| 120 | |
| 121 | * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval |
| 122 | program. |
| 123 | * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be |
| 124 | kept. |
| 125 | * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval. |
| 126 | * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper. |
| 127 | |
| 128 | Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x: |
| 129 | |
| 130 | * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize to adjust the volume of the |
| 131 | songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available |
| 132 | for mp3+lame combination. |
| 133 | * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume. |
| 134 | * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac. |
| 135 | Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac". |
| 136 | * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1 |
| 137 | abcde implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at |
| 138 | the end of the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the |
| 139 | PLAYLISTFORMAT and OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures |
| 140 | and playlist names for each of the output formats selected. |
| 141 | * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not |
| 142 | supplied by the CDDB server, it can be added. |
| 143 | |
| 144 | Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x: |
| 145 | |
| 146 | * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data |
| 147 | and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked, |
| 148 | use -N or INTERACTIVE=n |
| 149 | * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3 |
| 150 | if you still want to output mp3's. |
| 151 | * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y |
| 152 | * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various |
| 153 | Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data. |
| 154 | * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now |
| 155 | ACTIONS=playlist,clean |
| 156 | * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now |
| 157 | ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean |
| 158 | * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and |
| 159 | 'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed. |
| 160 | * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT. |
| 161 | * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database. |
| 162 | |
| 163 | |
| 164 | REQUIREMENTS |
| 165 | ============ |
| 166 | |
| 167 | abcde requires the following backend tools to work: |
| 168 | |
| 169 | * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or: |
| 170 | * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that |
| 171 | takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output, |
| 172 | will work. |
| 173 | You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/ |
| 174 | You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html |
| 175 | You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/ |
| 176 | You can get a trial version of mp3enc at: |
| 177 | http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or: |
| 178 | * FLAC encoder (flac) or: |
| 179 | * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or: |
| 180 | * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc) |
| 181 | * normalize for volume normalization. |
| 182 | * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility, |
| 183 | * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from, |
| 184 | * Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility. |
| 185 | * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde. |
| 186 | It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/ |
| 187 | * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX) |
| 188 | * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/ |
| 189 | * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/ |
| 190 | * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding. |
| 191 | You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html |
| 192 | |
| 193 | Potential problems: |
| 194 | |
| 195 | Having trouble getting cdparanoia to read from your drive as a user? |
| 196 | Add yourself to the cdrom group, change the permissions on your cdrom device |
| 197 | to 660, and if you have a SCSI cdrom drive, check the permissions on |
| 198 | /dev/sg* as well. |
| 199 | |
| 200 | Running out of disk space for .wav files but don't want to use -l? Put them |
| 201 | in a different location by adding WAVOUTPUTDIR=/some/other/path to your |
| 202 | /etc/abcde.conf or ~/.abcde.conf. |
| 203 | |
| 204 | If abcde seems to be ignoring your configuration options or not running |
| 205 | commands such as the encoder, you may have misquoted something. Config |
| 206 | options such as the following do not work: |
| 207 | |
| 208 | LAMEOPTS=-h -k |
| 209 | |
| 210 | Try this instead: |
| 211 | |
| 212 | LAMEOPTS='-h -k' |
| 213 | |
| 214 | Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not |
| 215 | been actively used. |
| 216 | The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam. |
| 217 | |
| 218 | Archives of the old list are publically available at: |
| 219 | http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html |
| 220 | |
| 221 | Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php |
| 222 | Abcde's new homepage will be at http://abcde.hispalinux.es/. |
| 223 | Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/. |
| 224 | -- |
| 225 | Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org> |
| 226 | Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es> |