README

   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 control
  11 codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a hyphen. The
  12 end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg This
  13 filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in your
  14 abcde.conf to change it.
  15
  16 Many of the questions related of problems executing abcde have been moved to the
  17 FAQ, which should be distributed along with this package. Reffer to that file
  18 for help.
  19
  20 To make abcde 2.x work more like 1.x, put these options in your abcde.conf:
  21
  22 INTERACTIVE=n
  23 OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
  24 ID3TAGV=1
  25
  26 MAJOR CHANGES
  27 =============
  28 Changes in 2.4:
  29 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao.
  30 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
  31   parsed CDDB entries.
  32 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define wether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
  33   the CDDB output.
  34
  35 Changes in 2.3:
  36 * Support for mkcue, to create a CUE sheet of the CD structure. It can be used
  37   with "-1" to create a backup, so that later on the original CD can be
  38   recreated.
  39 * New -o <output(1)>:<options(1)>,... way of passing specific options to an
  40   output. Now we can pass specific options without having to modify a config
  41   file. This feature was already present in the last versions of the 2.2 cycle.
  42 * Unix PIPEs, as a second way to encode files with a low disc space.
  43 * Option to erase the "encoded" entries from the status file. Allows one to
  44   encode the wav files (in case they were not erased) into another format. This
  45   is needed until status information is stored for each format.
  46 * The "ogg" output mode will be substituted for "vorbis" in the near future.
  47   This release adds a compatibility layer so that both entries work.
  48 * The FLAC encoder forces the files to be overwritten, in case they previously
  49   exists. This avoids a half-through abcde run to continue without errors in
  50   case it was cancelled during the FLAC encoding.
  51 * Added a post_read() function so that we can do things with the CD before we
  52   eject it.
  53
  54 Changes in 2.2:
  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 under
  58   the GPL...
  59 * New "-t <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at a
  60   given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
  61 * New "-T <number>" option, similar to "-t" but also modifies the tag entries
  62   on the files themselves.
  63 * New "-w <COMMENT>" to add a comment to the tracks of a given CD rip. Use
  64   quotes.
  65 * New "-W <number>" option to combine both a comment with "CD #number" and a
  66   starting number for both the tracks and the tags with "#01" (that is, 101 for
  67   the 1st CD, 201 for the second...)
  68 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
  69   erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
  70   one.
  71 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
  72   background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
  73   audio CD in the tray.
  74   The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
  75   system.
  76 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
  77   transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
  78 * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of
  79   valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
  80 * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A
  81   template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".
  82
  83 New options in 2.1.19:
  84
  85 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
  86   single file with all the tracks from the CD.
  87
  88 Changes in 2.1.18:
  89
  90 * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
  91   option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force the
  92   use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one can use
  93   the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.
  94
  95 New options in 2.1.16:
  96
  97 * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can set
  98   the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line.  This option
  99   can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the built-in
 100   cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
 101 * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
 102   One can use it to close the CD drive.
 103 * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some players
 104   insist on having those to work properly with playlists.
 105
 106 New options in 2.1.15:
 107
 108 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
 109 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
 110
 111 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
 112
 113 * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
 114 * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
 115   set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
 116 * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
 117   CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).
 118
 119 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
 120
 121 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
 122 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
 123   option.
 124
 125 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
 126
 127 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
 128
 129 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
 130
 131 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
 132
 133 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
 134
 135 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
 136   program.
 137 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
 138   kept.
 139 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
 140 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
 141
 142 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
 143
 144 * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize-audio to adjust the volume of
 145   the songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
 146   for mp3+lame combination.
 147 * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
 148 * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
 149   Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
 150 * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1 abcde
 151   implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at the end of
 152   the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the PLAYLISTFORMAT and
 153   OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures and playlist names for
 154   each of the output formats selected.
 155
 156 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not supplied
 157   by the CDDB server, it can be added.
 158
 159 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
 160
 161 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
 162   and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
 163   use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
 164 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
 165   if you still want to output mp3's.
 166 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
 167 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
 168   Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
 169 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
 170   ACTIONS=playlist,clean
 171 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
 172   ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
 173 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
 174   'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
 175 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
 176 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
 177
 178
 179 REQUIREMENTS
 180 ============
 181
 182 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 183
 184 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
 185 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
 186   takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
 187   will work.
 188   You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
 189   You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
 190   You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
 191   You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
 192     http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
 193 * FLAC encoder (flac) or:
 194 * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
 195 * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc)
 196 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
 197 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility,
 198 * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from,
 199 * Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
 200 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
 201   It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
 202 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
 203 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
 204 * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/
 205 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
 206   You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
 207
 208 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
 209 been actively used.
 210 The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.
 211
 212 Archives of the old list are publically available at:
 213 http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html
 214
 215 Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php
 216 Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/.
 217 --
 218 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>
 219
 220 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
 221