README

   1 ABCDE
   2 =====
   3
   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.
   8
   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.
  16
  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
  19 for more help.
  20
  21 MAJOR CHANGES
  22 =============
  23 Changes in 2.4:
  24 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao. The program mkcue is
  25   also optional.
  26 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
  27   parsed CDDB entries.
  28 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define wether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
  29   the CDDB output.
  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:
  32   "abcde -1 -M -o flac"
  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.
  36 * Added M4A encoding.
  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.
  41 * Added -z for debug.
  42 * Added -f to force the removal of left files.
  43
  44 Changes in 2.3:
  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
  60   eject it.
  61
  62 Changes in 2.2:
  63
  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
  66   the GPL...
  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
  72   quotes.
  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
  78   one.
  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
  81   audio CD in the tray.
  82   The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
  83   system.
  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".
  90
  91 New options in 2.1.19:
  92
  93 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
  94   single file with all the tracks from the CD.
  95
  96 Changes in 2.1.18:
  97
  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.
 102
 103 New options in 2.1.16:
 104
 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.
 113
 114 New options in 2.1.15:
 115
 116 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
 117 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
 118
 119 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
 120
 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).
 126
 127 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
 128
 129 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
 130 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
 131   option.
 132
 133 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
 134
 135 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
 136
 137 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
 138
 139 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
 140
 141 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
 142
 143 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
 144   program.
 145 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
 146   kept.
 147 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
 148 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
 149
 150 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
 151
 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.
 163
 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.
 166
 167 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
 168
 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.
 185
 186
 187 REQUIREMENTS
 188 ============
 189
 190 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 191
 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,
 195   will work.
 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
 215
 216 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
 217 been actively used.
 218 The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.
 219
 220 Archives of the old list are publically available at:
 221 http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html
 222
 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/.
 225 --
 226 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>
 227
 228 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
 229