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