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 control
  11 codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a hyphen. The
  12 end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg This
  13 filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in your
  14 abcde.conf to change it.
  15
  16 Many of the questions related of problems executing abcde have been moved to the
  17 FAQ, which should be distributed along with this package. Reffer to that file
  18 for help.
  19
  20 To make abcde 2.x work more like 1.x, put these options in your abcde.conf:
  21
  22 INTERACTIVE=n
  23 OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
  24 ID3TAGV=1
  25
  26 MAJOR CHANGES
  27 =============
  28 Changes in 2.4:
  29 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao.
  30 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
  31   parsed CDDB entries.
  32 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define wether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
  33   the CDDB output.
  34
  35 Changes in 2.3:
  36 * Support for mkcue, to create a CUE sheet of the CD structure. It can be used
  37   with "-1" to create a backup, so that later on the original CD can be
  38   recreated.
  39 * New -o <output(1)>:<options(1)>,... way of passing specific options to an
  40   output. Now we can pass specific options without having to modify a config
  41   file. This feature was already present in the last versions of the 2.2 cycle.
  42 * Unix PIPEs, as a second way to encode files with a low disc space.
  43 * Option to erase the "encoded" entries from the status file. Allows one to
  44   encode the wav files (in case they were not erased) into another format. This
  45   is needed until status information is stored for each format.
  46 * The "ogg" output mode will be substituted for "vorbis" in the near future.
  47   This release adds a compatibility layer so that both entries work.
  48 * The FLAC encoder forces the files to be overwritten, in case they previously
  49   exists. This avoids a half-through abcde run to continue without errors in
  50   case it was cancelled during the FLAC encoding.
  51
  52 Changes in 2.2:
  53
  54 * Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from
  55   corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released under
  56   the GPL...
  57 * New "-t <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at a
  58   given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
  59 * New "-T <number>" option, similar to "-t" but also modifies the tag entries
  60   on the files themselves.
  61 * New "-w <COMMENT>" to add a comment to the tracks of a given CD rip. Use
  62   quotes.
  63 * New "-W <number>" option to combine both a comment with "CD #number" and a
  64   starting number for both the tracks and the tags with "#01" (that is, 101 for
  65   the 1st CD, 201 for the second...)
  66 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
  67   erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
  68   one.
  69 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
  70   background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
  71   audio CD in the tray.
  72   The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
  73   system.
  74 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
  75   transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
  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 the
  90   use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one can use
  91   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 set
  96   the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line.  This option
  97   can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the built-in
  98   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 players
 102   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 abcde
 149   implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at the end of
 150   the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the PLAYLISTFORMAT and
 151   OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures and playlist names for
 152   each of the output formats selected.
 153
 154 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not supplied
 155   by the CDDB server, it can be added.
 156
 157 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
 158
 159 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
 160   and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
 161   use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
 162 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
 163   if you still want to output mp3's.
 164 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
 165 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
 166   Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
 167 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
 168   ACTIONS=playlist,clean
 169 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
 170   ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
 171 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
 172   'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
 173 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
 174 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
 175
 176
 177 REQUIREMENTS
 178 ============
 179
 180 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 181
 182 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
 183 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
 184   takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
 185   will work.
 186   You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
 187   You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
 188   You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
 189   You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
 190     http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
 191 * FLAC encoder (flac) or:
 192 * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
 193 * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc)
 194 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
 195 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility,
 196 * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from,
 197 * Or dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
 198 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
 199   It's available in Debian or http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/files/cd-discid/
 200 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
 201 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
 202 * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/
 203 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
 204   You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
 205
 206 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde@listas.hispalinux.es. So far has not
 207 been actively used.
 208 The posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam.
 209
 210 Archives of the old list are publically available at:
 211 http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html
 212
 213 Abcde's current page is at http://www.hispalinux.es/~data/abcde.php
 214 Abcde's old homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/.
 215 --
 216 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>
 217
 218 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
 219