ABCDE ===== abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that grabs tracks off a CD, encodes them to ogg or mp3 format, and tags them, all in one go. Your finished Oggs/MP3's are, by default, stored in a subdirectory of the current directory (named after the artist) with a filename based on the track title. Spaces are replaced by underscores, and apostrophes and control codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with an underscore and a hyphen. The end result usually looks like: Our_Lady_Peace/Supermans_Dead.mp3 This filename munging is customizable - edit the mungefilename function in your abcde.conf to change it. Need to go through an HTTP proxy for CDDB access? No problem, just export your http_proxy variable first so wget can see it. Low on disk space? abcde has different algorithms to schedule ripping and encoding - to optimize for disk conservation, use -l. abcde can also take advantage of SMP systems, just like make. Try 'abcde -j 2' - it'll run two encoder jobs while it rips the next track. abcde now uses FreeDB by default. To use a different FreeDB mirror or another CDDB service, change the CDDBURL option in your abcde.conf. Frustrated that you can't use the CPU power on Machine A sitting right next to Machine B with the fast cdrom drive? Now you don't have to be - Run distmp3host (included in distmp3) on Machine A, and then run abcde -r MachineA from Machine B (where "MachineA" is a dns name or IP address). Use this in combination with '-j 0' to shift all encoding off the local machine. To make abcde 2.x work more like 1.x, put these options in your abcde.conf: INTERACTIVE=n OUTPUTTYPE=mp3 ID3TAGV=1 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x: * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked, use -N or INTERACTIVE=n * The output type defaults to Ogg Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3 if you still want to output mp3's. * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data. * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now ACTIONS=playlist,clean * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and 'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed. * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT. * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database. abcde requires the following backend tools to work: * An Ogg encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or: * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc). Any MP3 encoder that takes two filenames on the command line, one for input, one for output, will work. You can get lame at: http://www.mp3dev.org/mp3/ You can get gogo at: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html You can get BladeEnc at: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/ You can get a trial version of mp3enc at: http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/ * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility, * Or cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from. * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde. It's available in Debian or at http://lly.org/~rcw/cd-discid/. * wget, an HTTP retrieval program. * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/ * id3v2, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://id3v2.sourceforge.net/ * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding. You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html Potential problems: Having trouble getting cdparanoia to read from your drive as a user? Add yourself to the cdrom group, change the permissions on your cdrom device to 660, and if you have a SCSI cdrom drive, check the permissions on /dev/sg* as well. Running out of disk space for .wav files but don't want to use -l? Put them in a different location by adding WAVOUTPUTDIR=/some/other/path to your /etc/abcde.conf or ~/.abcde.conf. If abcde seems to be ignoring your configuration options or not running commands such as the encoder, you may have misquoted something. Config options such as the following do not work: LAMEOPTS=-h -k Try this instead: LAMEOPTS='-h -k' Abcde's mailing list is abcde@whimsica.lly.org. It's a good place to find out about new releases and talk about bug reports and feature requests. You are encouraged to subscribe - my goal is to keep as much discussion about issues in abcde public as possible and to encourage open feedback. The list is low-volume and posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent spam. Archives of the list are publically available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/list/current/threads.html To subscribe, put "subscribe" in the subject or body of an email to "abcde-request@whimsica.lly.org". Abcde's homepage is at http://lly.org/~rcw/abcde/page/. -- Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>