4 abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that
5 grabs tracks off a CD or a singletrack flac file with an embeded cuesheet,
6 encodes them to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack)
7 format, and tags them, all in one go.
9 Your finished Ogg/MP3/FLAC/Speex/MPP's are, by default, stored in a subdirectory
10 of the current directory (named after the artist) with a filename based on the
11 track title. Spaces are replaced by underscores, and apostrophes and control
12 codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a hyphen. The
13 end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg This
14 filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in your
15 abcde.conf to change it.
17 Many of the questions related of problems executing abcde have been moved to the
18 FAQ, which should be distributed along with this package. Reffer to that file
24 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao. The program mkcue is
26 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
28 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define wether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
30 * Added the possibility of embeding a cuesheet on a singletrack flac file. A
31 single BACKUP flag is most likely needed to use all the needed flags:
33 * Added the possibility of using a singletrack flac file with an embeded
34 cuesheet as a source to extract tracks from.
35 * Added replaygain for Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC.
37 * Uses the default found $CDROMREADER instead of forcing cdparanoia when
38 cdda2wav is installed.
39 * BATCH mode has been splitted into two options: BATCHNORM and NOGAP.
40 * Added -u option for UNICODE (UTF-8) tag encoding.
42 * Added -f to force the removal of left files.
45 * Support for mkcue, to create a CUE sheet of the CD structure. It can be used
46 with "-1" to create a backup, so that later the original CD can be recreated.
47 * New -o <output(1)>:<options(1)>,... way of passing specific options to an
48 output. Now we can pass specific options without having to modify a config
49 file. This feature was already present in the last versions of the 2.2 cycle.
50 * Unix PIPEs, as a second way to encode files with a low disc space.
51 * Option to erase the "encoded" entries from the status file. Allows one to
52 encode the wav files (in case they were not erased) into another format. This
53 is needed until status information is stored for each format.
54 * The "ogg" output mode will be substituted for "vorbis" in the near future.
55 This release adds a compatibility layer so that both entries work.
56 * The FLAC encoder forces the files to be overwritten, in case they previously
57 exists. This avoids a half-through abcde run to continue without errors in
58 case it was cancelled during the FLAC encoding.
59 * Added a post_read() function so that we can do things with the CD before we
64 * Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from
65 corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released under
67 * New "-t <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at a
68 given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
69 * New "-T <number>" option, similar to "-t" but also modifies the tag entries
70 on the files themselves.
71 * New "-w <COMMENT>" to add a comment to the tracks of a given CD rip. Use
73 * New "-W <number>" option to combine both a comment with "CD #number" and a
74 starting number for both the tracks and the tags with "#01" (that is, 101 for
75 the 1st CD, 201 for the second...)
76 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
77 erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
79 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
80 background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
82 The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
84 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
85 transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
86 * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of
87 valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
88 * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A
89 template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".
91 New options in 2.1.19:
93 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
94 single file with all the tracks from the CD.
98 * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
99 option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force the
100 use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one can use
101 the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.
103 New options in 2.1.16:
105 * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can set
106 the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line. This option
107 can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the built-in
108 cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
109 * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
110 One can use it to close the CD drive.
111 * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some players
112 insist on having those to work properly with playlists.
114 New options in 2.1.15:
116 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
117 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
119 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
121 * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
122 * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
123 set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
124 * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
125 CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).
127 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
129 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
130 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
133 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
135 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
137 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
139 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
141 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
143 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
145 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
147 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
148 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
150 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
152 * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize-audio to adjust the volume of
153 the songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
154 for mp3+lame combination.
155 * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
156 * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
157 Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
158 * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1 abcde
159 implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at the end of
160 the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the PLAYLISTFORMAT and
161 OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures and playlist names for
162 each of the output formats selected.
164 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not supplied
165 by the CDDB server, it can be added.
167 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
169 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
170 and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
171 use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
172 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
173 if you still want to output mp3's.
174 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
175 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
176 Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
177 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
178 ACTIONS=playlist,clean
179 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
180 ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
181 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
182 'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
183 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
184 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
190 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
192 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
193 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
194 takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
196 You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
197 You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
198 You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
199 You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
200 http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
201 * FLAC encoder (flac) or:
202 * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
203 * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc)
204 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
205 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility,
206 * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from,
207 * Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
208 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
209 It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
210 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
211 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
212 * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/
213 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
214 You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
216 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
218 The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.
220 Archives of the old list are publically available at:
221 http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html
223 Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php
224 Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/.
226 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>
228 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>