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
  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 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
  62   erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
  63   one.
  64 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
  65   background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
  66   audio CD in the tray.
  67   The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
  68   system.
  69 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
  70   transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
  71 * No network but you have been using abcde with local CDDB storage before?
  72   Use -f and it will try the local CDDB and fallback to an empty template.
  73
  74 Changes in 2.2-pre1:
  75
  76 * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of
  77   valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
  78 * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A
  79   template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".
  80
  81 New options in 2.1.19:
  82
  83 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
  84   single file with all the tracks from the CD.
  85
  86 Changes in 2.1.18:
  87
  88 * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
  89   option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force
  90   the use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one
  91   can use the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.
  92
  93 New options in 2.1.16:
  94
  95 * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can
  96   set the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line.
  97   This option can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the
  98   built-in cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
  99 * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
 100   One can use it to close the CD drive.
 101 * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some
 102   players insist on having those to work properly with playlists.
 103
 104 New options in 2.1.15:
 105
 106 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
 107 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
 108
 109 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
 110
 111 * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
 112 * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
 113   set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
 114 * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
 115   CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).
 116
 117 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
 118
 119 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
 120 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
 121   option.
 122
 123 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
 124
 125 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
 126
 127 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
 128
 129 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
 130
 131 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
 132
 133 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
 134   program.
 135 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
 136   kept.
 137 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
 138 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
 139
 140 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
 141
 142 * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize-audio to adjust the volume of
 143   the songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
 144   for mp3+lame combination.
 145 * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
 146 * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
 147   Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
 148 * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1
 149   abcde implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at
 150   the end of the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the
 151   PLAYLISTFORMAT and OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures
 152   and playlist names for each of the output formats selected.
 153 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not
 154   supplied by the CDDB server, it can be added.
 155
 156 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
 157
 158 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
 159   and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
 160   use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
 161 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
 162   if you still want to output mp3's.
 163 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
 164 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
 165   Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
 166 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
 167   ACTIONS=playlist,clean
 168 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
 169   ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
 170 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
 171   'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
 172 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
 173 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
 174
 175
 176 REQUIREMENTS
 177 ============
 178
 179 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 180
 181 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
 182 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
 183   takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
 184   will work.
 185   You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
 186   You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
 187   You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
 188   You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
 189     http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
 190 * FLAC encoder (flac) or:
 191 * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
 192 * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc)
 193 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
 194 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility,
 195 * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from,
 196 * Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
 197 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
 198   It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
 199 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
 200 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
 201 * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/
 202 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
 203   You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
 204
 205 Potential problems:
 206
 207 Having trouble getting cdparanoia to read from your drive as a user?
 208 Add yourself to the cdrom group, change the permissions on your cdrom device
 209 to 660, and if you have a SCSI cdrom drive, check the permissions on
 210 /dev/sg* as well.
 211
 212 Running out of disk space for .wav files but don't want to use -l? Put them
 213 in a different location by adding WAVOUTPUTDIR=/some/other/path to your
 214 /etc/abcde.conf or ~/.abcde.conf.
 215
 216 If abcde seems to be ignoring your configuration options or not running
 217 commands such as the encoder, you may have misquoted something. Config
 218 options such as the following do not work:
 219
 220 LAMEOPTS=-h -k
 221
 222 Try this instead:
 223
 224 LAMEOPTS='-h -k'
 225
 226 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
 227 been actively used.
 228 The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.
 229
 230 Archives of the old list are publically available at:
 231 http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html
 232
 233 Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php
 234 Abcde's new homepage will be at http://abcde.hispalinux.es/.
 235 Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/.
 236 --
 237 Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
 238 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>