abcde.1

   1 .TH abcde 1
   2 .SH NAME
   3 abcde \- Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format.
   4 .SH SYNOPSIS
   5 .B abcde
   6 .I [options] [tracks]
   7 .SH DESCRIPTION
   8 Ordinarily, the process of grabbing the data off a CD and encoding it, then
   9 tagging or commenting it, is very involved.
  10 .BR abcde
  11 is designed to automate this. It will take an entire CD and convert it into
  12 a compressed audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless
  13 Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+(Musepack). With one command, it will:
  14 .TP
  15 .B *
  16 Do a CDDB query over the Internet to look up your CD or use a locally stored CDDB entry
  17 .TP
  18 .B *
  19 Grab an audio track (or all the audio CD tracks) from your CD
  20 .TP
  21 .B *
  22 Normalize the volume of the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
  23 .TP
  24 .B *
  25 Compress to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format(s), all in one CD read
  26 .TP
  27 .B *
  28 Comment or ID3/ID3v2 tag
  29 .TP
  30 .B *
  31 Give an intelligible filename
  32 .TP
  33 .B *
  34 Calculate replaygain values for the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
  35 .TP
  36 .B *
  37 Delete the intermediate WAV file (or save it for later use)
  38 .TP
  39 .B *
  40 Repeat until finished
  41 .SH OPTIONS
  42 .TP
  43 .B \-1
  44 Encode the whole CD in a single file. The resulting file uses the CD title
  45 for tagging. If the resulting format is a flac file with an embeded cuesheet,
  46 the file can be used as a source for creating other formats.
  47 .TP
  48 .B \-a [actions]
  49 Comma-delimited list of actions to perform. Can be one or more of:
  50 cddb, read, normalize, encode, tag, move, replaygain, playlist, clean. Normalize
  51 and encode imply read. Tag implies cddb, read, encode. Move implies
  52 cddb, read, encode, tag. Replaygain implies cddb, read, encode, tag and move.
  53 Playlist implies cddb. The default is to do all actions except normalize,
  54 replaygain and playlist.
  55 .TP
  56 .B \-b
  57 Enable batch mode normalization. See the BATCHNORM configuration variable.
  58 .TP
  59 .B \-B
  60 Disable batch mode replaygain. It processes file by file to add the replaygain
  61 information. See the NOBATCHREPLAYGAIN configuration vatiable.
  62 .TP
  63 .B \-c [filename]
  64 Specifies an additional configuration file to parse. Configuration options
  65 in this file override those in /etc/abcde.conf or $HOME/.abcde.conf.
  66 .TP
  67 .B \-C [discid]
  68 Allows you to resume a session for
  69 .I discid
  70 when you no longer have the CD available (abcde will automatically resume if
  71 you still have the CD in the drive). You must have already finished at
  72 least the "read" action during the previous session.
  73 .TP
  74 .B \-d [devicename | filename]
  75 CD\-ROM block device that contains audio tracks to be read. Alternatively, a
  76 single-track flac file with embeded cuesheet.
  77 .TP
  78 .B \-D
  79 Capture debugging information (you'll want to redirect this \- try 'abcde \-D
  80 2>logfile')
  81 .TP
  82 .B \-e
  83 Erase information about encoded tracks from the internal status file, to enable
  84 other encodings if the wav files have been kept.
  85 .TP
  86 .B \-g
  87 Enable lame's \-\-nogap option.  See the NOGAP variable. WARNING: lame's
  88 \-\-nogap disables the Xing mp3 tag.  This tag is required for mp3 players to
  89 correctly display track lengths when playing variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
  90 .TP
  91 .B \-h
  92 Get help information.
  93 .TP
  94 .B \-j [number]
  95 Start [number] encoder processes at once. Useful for SMP systems. Overrides
  96 the MAXPROCS configuration variable. Set it to "0" when using distmp3 to avoid
  97 local encoding processes.
  98 .TP
  99 .B \-k
 100 Keep the wav files after encoding.
 101 .TP
 102 .B \-l
 103 Use the low-diskspace algorithm. See the LOWDISK configuration variable.
 104 .TP
 105 .B \-L
 106 Use a local CDDB repository. See CDDBLOCALDIR variable.
 107 .TP
 108 .B \-n
 109 Do not query CDDB database. Create and use a template. Edit the template to
 110 provide song names, artist(s), ...
 111 .TP
 112 .B \-N
 113 Non interactive mode. Do not ask anything from the user. Just go ahead.
 114 .TP
 115 .B \-m
 116 Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by adding CRLF line
 117 endings. Some hardware players insist on having those to work.
 118 .TP
 119 .B \-M
 120 Create a CUE file with information about the CD. Together with the possibility
 121 of creating a single file (see option "\-1"), one can recreate the original CD.
 122 If the cuesheet is embeded in a flac single file it can be used as source for
 123 encoding other formats.
 124 .TP
 125 .B \-o [filetype][:filetypeoptions]
 126 Select output type. Can be "vorbis" (or "ogg"), "mp3", "flac", "spx", "mpc" or
 127 "wav".  Specify a comma-delimited list of output types to obtain all specified
 128 types.  See the OUTPUTTYPE configuration variable. One can pass options to the
 129 encoder for a specific filetype on the command line separating them with a
 130 colon. The options must be escaped with double-quotes.
 131 .TP
 132 .B \-p
 133 Pads track numbers with 0\'s.
 134 .TP
 135 .B \-r [hosts...]
 136 Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using distmp3. See
 137 the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.
 138 .TP
 139 .B \-s [fields...]
 140 List, separated by comas, the fields to be shown in the CDDB parsed entries.
 141 Right now it only uses "year" and "genre".
 142 .TP
 143 .B \-S [speed]
 144 Set the speed of the CD drive. Needs CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS set properly
 145 and both the program and device must support the capability.
 146 .TP
 147 .B \-t [number]
 148 Start the numbering of the tracks at a given number. It only affects the
 149 filenames and the playlist. Internal (tag) numbering remains the same.
 150 .TP
 151 .B \-T [number]
 152 Same as \-t but changes also the internal (tag) numbering. Keep in mind that
 153 the default TRACK tag for MP3 is $T/$TRACKS so it is changed to simply $T.
 154 .TP
 155 .B \-v
 156 Show the version and exit
 157 .TP
 158 .B \-V
 159 Be a bit more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might give the
 160 sensation nothins is happening.
 161 .TP
 162 .B \-x
 163 Eject the CD when all tracks have been read. See the EJECTCD configuration
 164 variable.
 165 .TP
 166 .B \-w [comment]
 167 Add a comment to the tracks ripped from the CD.
 168 .TP
 169 .B \-W [number]
 170 Concatenate CD\'s. It uses the number provided to define a comment "CD #" and
 171 to modify the numbering of the tracks, starting with "#01".
 172 .TP
 173 .B [tracks]
 174 A list of tracks you want abcde to process. If this isn't specified, abcde
 175 will process the entire CD. Accepts ranges of track numbers -
 176 "abcde 1-5 7 9" will process tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9.
 177 .SH OUTPUT
 178 Each track is, by default, placed in a separate file named after the track
 179 in a subdirectory named after the artist under the current directory.
 180 This can be modified using the OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT
 181 variables in your abcde.conf. Each file is given an extension identifying
 182 its compression format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac', '.spx', '.mpc', or '.wav'.
 183 .SH CONFIGURATION
 184 abcde sources two configuration files on startup - /etc/abcde.conf and
 185 $HOME/.abcde.conf, in that order.
 186 .TP
 187 The configuration options stated on those files can ba overriden by providing
 188 the appropiate flags at runtime.
 189 .TP
 190 The configuration variables have to be set as follows:
 191 .TP
 192 .B VARIABLE=value
 193 Except when "value" needs to be quoted or otherwise interpreted. If other
 194 variables within "value" are to be expanded upon reading the configuration
 195 file, then double quotes should be used. If they are only supposed to be
 196 expanded upon use (for example OUTPUTFORMAT) then single quotes must be used.
 197 .TP
 198 All sh escaping/quoting rules apply.
 199 .TP
 200 Here is a list of options abcde recognizes:
 201 .TP
 202 .B CDDBURL
 203 Specifies a server to use for CDDB lookups.
 204 .TP
 205 .B HELLOINFO
 206 Specifies the Hello information to send to the CDDB server. The CDDB
 207 protocol requires you to send a valid username and hostname each time you
 208 connect. The format of this is username@hostname.
 209 .TP
 210 .B CDDBLOCALDIR
 211 Specifies a directory where we store a local CDDB repository. The entries must
 212 be standard CDDB entries, with the filename being the DISCID value. Other
 213 CD playing and ripping programs (like Grip) store the entries under ~/.cddb
 214 and we can make use of those entries.
 215 .TP
 216 .B CDDBCOPYLOCAL
 217 Store local copies of the CDDB entries under the $CDDBLOCALDIR directory.
 218 .TP
 219 .B CDDBUSELOCAL
 220 Actually use the stored copies of the CDDB entries. Can be overriden using the
 221 "-L" flag (if is CDDBUSELOCAL in "n"). If an entry is found, we always give
 222 the choice of retrieving a CDDB entry from the internet.
 223 .TP
 224 .B SHOWCDDBFIELDS
 225 Coma-separated list of fields we want to parse during the CDDB parsing.
 226 Defaults to "year,genre".
 227 .TP
 228 .B OGGENCODERSYNTAX
 229 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Ogg/Vorbis encoder. Valid options
 230 are \'oggenc\' (default for Ogg/Vorbis) and \'vorbize\'.
 231 This affects the default location of the binary,
 232 the variable to pick encoder command-line options from, and where the options
 233 are given.
 234 .TP
 235 .B MP3ENCODERSYNTAX
 236 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the MP3 encoder. Valid options are
 237 \'lame\' (default for MP3), \'gogo\', \'bladeenc\', \'l3enc\' and \'mp3enc\'.
 238 Affects the same way as explained above for Ogg/Vorbis.
 239 .TP
 240 .B FLACENCODERSYNTAX
 241 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the FLAC encoder. At this point only
 242 \'flac\' is available for FLAC encoding.
 243 .TP
 244 .B SPEEXENCODERSYNTAX
 245 Specifies the style of encoder to use for Speex encoder. At this point only
 246 \'speexenc\' is available for Ogg/Speex encoding.
 247 .TP
 248 .B MPPENCODERSYNTAX
 249 Specifies the style of encoder to use for MPP/MP+ (Musepack) encoder. At this
 250 point we only have \'mppenc\' available, from corecodecs.org.
 251 .TP
 252 .B NORMALIZERSYNTAX
 253 Specifies the style of normalizer to use.  Valid options are \'default\'
 254 and \'normalize'\ (and both run \'normalize-audio\'), since we only support it,
 255 ATM.
 256 .TP
 257 .B CDROMREADERSYNTAX
 258 Specifies the style of cdrom reader to use. Valid options are \'cdparanoia\',
 259 \'debug\' and \'flac\'. It is used for querying the CDROM and obtain a list of
 260 valid tracks and DATA tracks. The special \'flac\' case is used to "rip" CD
 261 tracks from a single-track flac file.
 262 .TP
 263 .B CUEREADERSYNTAX
 264 Specifies the syntax of the program we use to read the CD CUE sheet. Right now
 265 we only support \'mkcue\', but in the future other readers might be used.
 266 .TP
 267 .B KEEPWAVS
 268 It defaults to no, so if you want to keep those wavs ripped from your CD,
 269 set it to "y". You can use the "-k" switch in the command line. The default
 270 behaviour with KEEPWAVS set is to keep the temporary directory and the wav
 271 files even you have requested the "clean" action.
 272 .TP
 273 .B PADTRACKS
 274 If set to "y", it adds 0's to the file numbers to complete a two-number
 275 holder. Useful when encoding tracks 1-9.
 276 .TP
 277 .B INTERACTIVE
 278 Set to "n" if you want to perform automatic rips, without user intervention.
 279 .TP
 280 .B NICE VALUES
 281 Define the values for priorities (nice values) for the different CPU-hungry
 282 processes: encoding (ENCNICE), CDROM read (READNICE) and distributed encoder
 283 with distmp3 (DISTMP3NICE).
 284 .TP
 285 .B PATHNAMES
 286 The following configuration file options specify the pathnames of their
 287 respective utilities: LAME, GOGO, BLADEENC, L3ENC, XINGMP3ENC, MP3ENC, VORBIZE,
 288 OGGENC, FLAC, SPEEXENC, MPPENC, ID3, ID3V2, CDPARANOIA, CDDA2WAV, CDDAFS,
 289 CDDISCID, CDDBTOOL, EJECT, MD5SUM, DISTMP3, VORBISCOMMENT, NORMALIZE, CDSPEED,
 290 VORBISGAIN, MKCUE and HTTPGET.
 291 .TP
 292 .B COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
 293 If you wish to specify command-line options to any of the programs abcde
 294 uses, set the following configuration file options: LAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS,
 295 BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS, XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS,
 296 FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPPENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, ID3V2OPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS,
 297 CDDA2WAVOPTS, CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS,
 298 CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS,VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS, METAFLACOPTS and HTTPGETOPTS.
 299 .TP
 300 .B CDSPEEDVALUE
 301 Set the value of the CDROM speed. The default is to read the disc as fast as
 302 the reading program and the system permits. The steps are defined as 150kB/s
 303 (1x).
 304 .TP
 305 .B ACTIONS
 306 The default actions to be performed when reading a disc.
 307 .TP
 308 .B CDROM
 309 If set, it points to the CD-Rom device which has to be used for audio
 310 extraction. Abcde tries to guess the right device, but it may fail. The special
 311 \'flac\' option is defined to extract tracks from a single-track flac file.
 312 .TP
 313 .B CDPARANOIACDROMBUS
 314 Defined as "d" when using cdparanoia with an IDE bus and as "g" when using
 315 cdparanoia with the ide-scsi emulation layer.
 316 .TP
 317 .B OUTPUTDIR
 318 Specifies the directory to place completed tracks/playlists in.
 319 .TP
 320 .B WAVOUTPUTDIR
 321 Specifies the temporary directory to store .wav files in. Abcde may use up
 322 to 700MB of temporary space for each session (although it is rare to use
 323 over 100MB for a machine that can encode music as fast as it can read it).
 324 .TP
 325 .B OUTPUTTYPE
 326 Specifies the encoding format to output, as well as the default extension and
 327 encoder. Defaults to "vorbis". Valid settings are "vorbis" (or "ogg")
 328 (Ogg/Vorbis), "mp3" (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), "flac" (Free Lossless Audio
 329 Codec), "spx" (Ogg/Speex), "mpc" (MPP/MP+ (Musepack)) or "wav" (Microsoft
 330 Waveform). Values like "vorbis,mp3" encode the tracks in both Ogg/Vorbis and
 331 MP3 formats.
 332 .br
 333 For each value in OUTPUTTYPE, abcde expands a different process for encoding,
 334 tagging and moving, so you can use the format placeholder, OUTPUT, to create
 335 different subdirectories to hold the different types. The variable OUTPUT will
 336 be 'vorbis', 'mp3', 'flac', 'spx' and/or 'mpc', depending on the OUTPUTTYPE you define.
 337 For example
 338 .br
 339 OUTPUTFORMAT='${OUTPUT}/${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}._${TRACKFILE}'
 340 .TP
 341 .B OUTPUTFORMAT
 342 Specifies the format for completed Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+
 343 (Musepack) filenames.
 344 Variables are included
 345 using standard shell syntax. Allowed variables are GENRE, ALBUMFILE, ARTISTFILE,
 346 TRACKFILE, TRACKNUM, and YEAR. Default is
 347 \'${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}-${TRACKFILE}\'.
 348 Make sure to use single quotes around this variable. TRACKNUM is
 349 automatically zero-padded, when the number of encoded tracks is higher than
 350 9. When lower, you can force with '-p' in the command line.
 351 .TP
 352 .B VAOUTPUTFORMAT
 353 Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. Default is whatever
 354 OUTPUTFORMAT is set to.
 355 .TP
 356 .B MAXPROCS
 357 Defines how many encoders to run at once. This makes for huge speedups
 358 on SMP systems. You should run one encoder per CPU at once for maximum
 359 efficiency, although more doesn't hurt very much. Set it "0" when using
 360 mp3dist to avoid getting encoding processes in the local host.
 361 .TP
 362 .B LOWDISK
 363 If set to y, conserves disk space by encoding tracks immediately after
 364 reading them. This is substantially slower than normal operation but
 365 requires several hundred MB less space to complete the encoding of an
 366 entire CD. Use only if your system is low on space and cannot encode as
 367 quickly as it can read.
 368 .TP
 369 .B BATCHNORM
 370 If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which preserves relative
 371 volume differences between tracks of an album. Also enables nogap encoding
 372 when using the \'lame\' encoder.
 373 .TP
 374 .B NOGAP
 375 Activate the lame's \-\-nogap option, that allows files found in CDs with no
 376 silence between songs (such as live concerts) to be encoded without noticeable
 377 gaps. WARNING: lame's \-\-nogap disables the Xing mp3 tag.  This tag is
 378 required for mp3 players to correctly display track lengths when playing
 379 variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
 380 .TP
 381 .B PLAYLISTFORMAT
 382 Specifies the format for completed playlist filenames. Works like the
 383 OUTPUTFORMAT configuration variable. Default is
 384 \'${ARTISTFILE}_\-_${ALBUMFILE}.m3u\'.
 385 Make sure to use single quotes around this variable.
 386 .TP
 387 .B PLAYLISTDATAPREFIX
 388 Specifies a prefix for filenames within a playlist. Useful for http
 389 playlists, etc.
 390 .TP
 391 .B DOSPLAYLIST
 392 If set, the resulting playlist will have CR-LF line endings, needed by some
 393 hardware-based players.
 394 .TP
 395 .B COMMENT
 396 Specifies a comment to embed in the ID3 or Ogg comment field of each
 397 finished track. Can be up to 28 characters long. Supports the same
 398 syntax as OUTPUTFORMAT. Does not currently support ID3v2.
 399 .TP
 400 .B REMOTEHOSTS
 401 Specifies a comma-delimited list of systems to use for remote encoding using
 402 distmp3. Equivalent to -r.
 403 .TP
 404 .B mungefilename
 405 mungefilename() is an abcde shell function that can be overridden via
 406 abcde.conf. It takes CDDB data as $1 and outputs the resulting filename on
 407 stdout. It defaults to eating control characters, apostrophes and
 408 question marks, translating spaces and forward slashes to underscores, and
 409 translating colons to an underscore and a hyphen.
 410 .br
 411 If you modify this function, it is probably a good idea to keep the forward
 412 slash munging (UNIX cannot store a file with a '/' char in it) as well as
 413 the control character munging (NULs can't be in a filename either, and
 414 newlines and such in filenames are typically not desirable).
 415 .TP
 416 .B mungegenre
 417 mungegenre () is a shell function used to modify the $GENRE variable. As
 418 a default action, it takes $GENRE as $1 and outputs the resulting value
 419 to stdout converting all UPPERCASE characters to lowercase.
 420 .TP
 421 .B pre_read
 422 pre_read () is a shell function which is executed before the CDROM is read
 423 for the first time, during abcde execution. It can be used to close the CDROM
 424 tray, to set its speed (via "setcd" or via "eject", if available) and other
 425 preparation actions. The default function is empty.
 426 .TP
 427 .B post_read
 428 post_read () is a shell function which is executed after the CDROM is read
 429 (and, if applies, before the CDROM is ejected). It can be used to read a TOC
 430 from the CDROM, or to try to read the DATA areas from the CD (if any exist).
 431 The default function is empty.
 432 .TP
 433 .B EJECTCD
 434 If set to "y", abcde will call eject(1) to eject the cdrom from the drive
 435 after all tracks have been read. It has no effect when CDROM is set to a flac
 436 file.
 437 .TP
 438 .B EXTRAVERBOSE
 439 If set to "y", some operations which are usually now shown to the end user
 440 are visible, such as CDDB queries. Useful for initial debug and if your
 441 network/CDDB server is slow.
 442 .SH EXAMPLES
 443 Possible ways one can call abcde
 444 .TP
 445 .B abcde
 446 Will work in most systems
 447 .TP
 448 .B abcde \-d /dev/cdrom2
 449 If the CDROM you are reding from is not the standard /dev/cdrom (in GNU/Linux systems)
 450 .TP
 451 .B abcde \-o vorbis,flac
 452 Will create both Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC files.
 453 .TP
 454 .B abcde \-o vorbis:"-b 192"
 455 Will pass "-b 192" to the Ogg/Vorbis encoder, without having to modify the
 456 config file
 457 .TP
 458 .B abcde \-W 1
 459 For double+ CD settings: will create the 1st CD starting with the track number
 460 101, and will add a comment "CD 1" to the tracks, the second starting with 201
 461 and so on.
 462 .TP
 463 .B abcde \-d singletrack.flac
 464 Will extract the files contained in singletrack using the embeded cuesheet.
 465 .SH BACKEND TOOLS
 466 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 467 .TP
 468 .B *
 469 An Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (oggenc, vorbize, lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, mp3enc, flac, speexenc, mppenc)
 470 .TP
 471 .B *
 472 An audio CD reading utility (cdparanoia, cdda2wav, dagrab)
 473 .TP
 474 .B *
 475 cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
 476 .TP
 477 .B *
 478 An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (Mac OS X, among others).
 479 .TP
 480 .B *
 481 (for MP3s) id3 or id3v2, id3 v1 and v2 tagging programs.
 482 .TP
 483 .B *
 484 (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
 485 .TP
 486 .B *
 487 (optional) normalize-audio, a WAV file volume normalizer.
 488 .TP
 489 .B *
 490 (optional) a replaygain file volume modifier (vorbisgain, metaflac, mp3gain),
 491 .TP
 492 .B *
 493 (optional) mkcue, a CD cuesheet extractor.
 494 .SH "SEE ALSO"
 495 .BR cdparanoia (1),
 496 .BR cdda2wav (1),
 497 .BR dagrab (1),
 498 .BR normalize-audio (1),
 499 .BR oggenc (1),
 500 .BR vorbize (1),
 501 .BR flac (1),
 502 .BR toolame (1),
 503 .BR speexenc (1),
 504 .BR mppenc (1),
 505 .BR id3 (1),
 506 .BR id3v2 (1),
 507 .BR wget (1),
 508 .BR fetch (1),
 509 .BR cd-discid (1),
 510 .BR distmp3 (1),
 511 .BR distmp3host (1),
 512 .BR curl (1),
 513 .BR mkcue (1),
 514 .BR vorbisgain (1),
 515 .BR mp3gain (1)
 516 .SH AUTHORS
 517 Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>,
 518 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es> and contributions from many others.