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 2.5:
  24 * Added working support for Musicbrainz using a perl helper script.
  25
  26 Changes in 2.4:
  27 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao. The program mkcue is
  28   also optional.
  29 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
  30   parsed CDDB entries.
  31 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define wether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
  32   the CDDB output.
  33 * Added the possibility of embeding a cuesheet on a singletrack flac file. A
  34   single BACKUP flag is most likely needed to use all the needed flags:
  35   "abcde -1 -o flac -a default,cue"
  36 * Added the possibility of using a singletrack flac file with an embeded
  37   cuesheet as a source to extract tracks from (use -X to specify an external
  38   CUE2DISCID implementation; check under examples in the distributed source
  39   code or package).
  40 * Added replaygain for Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC.
  41 * Added M4A encoding.
  42 * Uses the default found $CDROMREADER instead of forcing cdparanoia when
  43   cdda2wav is installed.
  44 * BATCH mode has been split into two options: BATCHNORM and NOGAP.
  45 * Added -U option for non-UNICODE (non UTF-8) tag encoding.
  46 * Added -z for debug.
  47 * Added -f to force the removal of left files.
  48 * CUE support has changed from a flag (-M) to an action (cue).
  49
  50 Changes in 2.3:
  51 * Support for mkcue, to create a CUE sheet of the CD structure. It can be used
  52   with "-1" to create a backup, so that later the original CD can be recreated.
  53 * New -o <output(1)>:<options(1)>,... way of passing specific options to an
  54   output. Now we can pass specific options without having to modify a config
  55   file. This feature was already present in the last versions of the 2.2 cycle.
  56 * Unix PIPEs, as a second way to encode files with a low disc space.
  57 * Option to erase the "encoded" entries from the status file. Allows one to
  58   encode the wav files (in case they were not erased) into another format. This
  59   is needed until status information is stored for each format.
  60 * The "ogg" output mode will be substituted for "vorbis" in the near future.
  61   This release adds a compatibility layer so that both entries work.
  62 * The FLAC encoder forces the files to be overwritten, in case they previously
  63   exists. This avoids a half-through abcde run to continue without errors in
  64   case it was cancelled during the FLAC encoding.
  65 * Added a post_read() function so that we can do things with the CD before we
  66   eject it.
  67
  68 Changes in 2.2:
  69
  70 * Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from
  71   corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released under
  72   the GPL...
  73 * New "-t <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at a
  74   given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
  75 * New "-T <number>" option, similar to "-t" but also modifies the tag entries
  76   on the files themselves.
  77 * New "-w <COMMENT>" to add a comment to the tracks of a given CD rip. Use
  78   quotes.
  79 * New "-W <number>" option to combine both a comment with "CD #number" and a
  80   starting number for both the tracks and the tags with "#01" (that is, 101 for
  81   the 1st CD, 201 for the second...)
  82 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
  83   erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
  84   one.
  85 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
  86   background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
  87   audio CD in the tray.
  88   The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
  89   system.
  90 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
  91   transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
  92 * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of
  93   valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
  94 * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A
  95   template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".
  96
  97 New options in 2.1.19:
  98
  99 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
 100   single file with all the tracks from the CD.
 101
 102 Changes in 2.1.18:
 103
 104 * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
 105   option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force the
 106   use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one can use
 107   the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.
 108
 109 New options in 2.1.16:
 110
 111 * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can set
 112   the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line.  This option
 113   can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the built-in
 114   cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
 115 * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
 116   One can use it to close the CD drive.
 117 * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some players
 118   insist on having those to work properly with playlists.
 119
 120 New options in 2.1.15:
 121
 122 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
 123 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
 124
 125 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
 126
 127 * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
 128 * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
 129   set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
 130 * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
 131   CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).
 132
 133 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
 134
 135 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
 136 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
 137   option.
 138
 139 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
 140
 141 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
 142
 143 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
 144
 145 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
 146
 147 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
 148
 149 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
 150   program.
 151 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
 152   kept.
 153 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
 154 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
 155
 156 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
 157
 158 * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize-audio to adjust the volume of
 159   the songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
 160   for mp3+lame combination.
 161 * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
 162 * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
 163   Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
 164 * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1 abcde
 165   implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at the end of
 166   the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the PLAYLISTFORMAT and
 167   OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures and playlist names for
 168   each of the output formats selected.
 169
 170 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not supplied
 171   by the CDDB server, it can be added.
 172
 173 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
 174
 175 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
 176   and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
 177   use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
 178 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
 179   if you still want to output mp3's.
 180 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
 181 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
 182   Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
 183 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
 184   ACTIONS=playlist,clean
 185 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
 186   ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
 187 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
 188   'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
 189 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
 190 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
 191
 192
 193 REQUIREMENTS
 194 ============
 195
 196 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
 197
 198 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
 199 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that
 200   takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output,
 201   will work.
 202   You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/
 203   You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
 204   You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
 205   You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
 206     http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ or:
 207 * FLAC encoder (flac) or:
 208 * Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
 209 * MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mppenc) or:
 210 * AAC encoder (faac)
 211 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
 212 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility or:
 213 * icedax/cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from or:
 214 * dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
 215 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
 216   It's available in Debian or http://linukz.org/cd-discid.shtml
 217 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
 218 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
 219 * eyeD3, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://eyed3.nicfit.net/
 220 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
 221   You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
 222
 223 Abcde's new mailing list is abcde-users@lists.einval.com. Visit
 224
 225   http://lists.einval.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/abcde-users
 226
 227 to subscribe. Posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent
 228 spam.
 229
 230 Abcde's current page is at http://code.google.com/p/abcde/
 231
 232 --
 233 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>
 234 Colin Tuckley <colint@debian.org>
 235 Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org>
 236
 237 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
 238