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