NAME¶
abcde - Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex
and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format.
SYNOPSIS¶
abcde [options] [tracks]
DESCRIPTION¶
Ordinarily, the process of grabbing the data off a CD and encoding it, then
tagging or commenting it, is very involved.
abcde is designed to
automate this. It will take an entire CD and convert it into a compressed
audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless Audio Codec
(FLAC), Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack) and/or M4A (AAC) format(s). With one
command, it will:
- *
- Do a CDDB or Musicbrainz query over the Internet to look up
your CD or use a locally stored CDDB entry
- *
- Grab an audio track (or all the audio CD tracks) from your
CD
- *
- Normalize the volume of the individual file (or the album
as a single unit)
- *
- Compress to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex,
MPP/MP+(Musepack) and/or M4A format(s), all in one CD read
- *
- Comment or ID3/ID3v2 tag
- *
- Give an intelligible filename
- *
- Calculate replaygain values for the individual file (or the
album as a single unit)
- *
- Delete the intermediate WAV file (or save it for later
use)
- *
- Repeat until finished
Alternatively,
abcde can also grab a CD and turn it into a single FLAC
file with an embedded cuesheet which can be user later on as a source for
other formats, and will be treated as if it was the original CD. In a way,
abcde can take a compressed backup of your CD collection.
OPTIONS¶
- -1
- Encode the whole CD in a single file. The resulting file
uses the CD title for tagging. If the resulting format is a flac file with
an embedded cuesheet, the file can be used as a source for creating other
formats. Use "-1 -o flac -a default,cue" for obtaining such a
file.
- -a [actions]
- Comma-delimited list of actions to perform. Can be one or
more of: cddb, cue, read, normalize, encode, tag, move, replaygain,
playlist, clean. Normalize and encode imply read. Tag implies cddb, read,
encode. Move implies cddb, read, encode, tag. Replaygain implies cddb,
read, encode, tag and move. Playlist implies cddb. The default is to do
all actions except cue, normalize, replaygain and playlist.
- -b
- Enable batch mode normalization. See the BATCHNORM
configuration variable.
- -B
- Disable batch mode replaygain. It processes file by file to
add the replaygain information. See the NOBATCHREPLAYGAIN configuration
variable.
- -c [filename]
- Specifies an additional configuration file to parse.
Configuration options in this file override those in
/etc/abcde.conf or $HOME/.abcde.conf.
- -C [discid]
- Allows you to resume a session for discid when you
no longer have the CD available ( abcde will automatically resume
if you still have the CD in the drive). You must have already finished at
least the "read" action during the previous session.
- -d [devicename | filename]
- CD-ROM block device that contains audio tracks to be read.
Alternatively, a single-track flac file with embedded cuesheet.
- -D
- Capture debugging information (you'll want to redirect this
- try 'abcde -D 2>logfile')
- -e
- Erase information about encoded tracks from the internal
status file, to enable other encodings if the wav files have been
kept.
- -f
- Force the removal of the temporary ABCDETEMPDIR directory,
even when we have not finished. For example, one can read and encode
several formats, including ´.ogg´, and later on execute a
´move´ action with only one of the given formats. On a normal
situation it would erase the rest of those encoded formats. In this case,
abcde will refuse to execute such command, except if -f is
used.
- -g
- Enable lame's --nogap option. See the NOGAP variable.
WARNING: lame's --nogap disables the Xing mp3 tag. This tag is required
for mp3 players to correctly display track lengths when playing
variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
- -h
- Get help information.
- -j [number]
- Start [number] encoder processes at once. Useful for SMP
systems. Overrides the MAXPROCS configuration variable. Set it to
"0" when using distmp3 to avoid local encoding
processes.
- -k
- Keep the wav files after encoding.
- -l
- Use the low-diskspace algorithm. See the LOWDISK
configuration variable.
- -L
- Use a local CDDB repository. See CDDBLOCALDIR
variable.
- -m
- Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by
adding CRLF line endings. Some hardware players insist on having those to
work.
- -n
- Do not query CDDB database. Create and use a template. Edit
the template to provide song names, artist(s), ...
- -N
- Non interactive mode. Do not ask anything from the user.
Just go ahead.
- -o [filetype][:filetypeoptions]
- Select output type. Can be "vorbis" (or
"ogg"), "mp3", "flac", "spx",
"mpc", "m4a" or "wav". Specify a
comma-delimited list of output types to obtain all specified types. See
the OUTPUTTYPE configuration variable. One can pass options to the encoder
for a specific filetype on the command line separating them with a colon.
The options must be escaped with double-quotes.
- -p
- Pads track numbers with 0´s.
- -P
- Use Unix PIPES to read and encode in one step. It disables
multiple encodings, since the WAV audio file is never stored in the
disc.
- -q [quality]
- Use a pre-defined quality level for the encoding process.
Defined as low, medium or high. The "medium" value is used to
reset the default values if other are used in the config file(s).
- -r [hosts...]
- Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines
using distmp3. See the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.
- -s [fields...]
- List, separated by commas, the fields to be shown in the
CDDB parsed entries. Right now it only uses "year" and
"genre".
- -S [speed]
- Set the speed of the CD drive. Needs CDSPEED and
CDSPEEDOPTS set properly and both the program and device must support the
capability.
- -t [number]
- Start the numbering of the tracks at a given number. It
only affects the filenames and the playlist. Internal (tag) numbering
remains the same.
- -T [number]
- Same as -t but changes also the internal (tag) numbering.
Keep in mind that the default TRACK tag for MP3 is $T/$TRACKS so it is
changed to simply $T.
- -U
- Set CDDBPROTO to version 5, so that we retrieve ISO-8859-15
encoded CDDB information, and we tag and add comments with Latin1
encoding.
- -v
- Show the version and exit
- -V
- Be more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might
give the sensation nothing is happening. Add this more than once to make
things even more verbose.
- -x
- Eject the CD when all tracks have been read. See the
EJECTCD configuration variable.
- -X [cue2discid]
- Use an alternative "cue2discid" implementation.
The name of the binary must be exactly that. abcde comes with an
implementation in python under the examples directory. The special keyword
"builtin" forces the usage of the internal (default)
implementation in shell script.
- -w [comment]
- Add a comment to the tracks ripped from the CD.
- -W [number]
- Concatenate CD´s. It uses the number provided to
define a comment "CD #" and to modify the numbering of the
tracks, starting with "#01". For Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files, it
also defines a DISCNUMBER tag.
- -z
- DEBUG mode: it will rip, using cdparanoia, the very
first second of each track and proceed with the actions requested very
quickly, also providing some "hidden" information about what
happens on the background. CAUTION: IT WILL ERASE ANY EXISTING RIPS
WITHOUT WARNING!
- [tracks]
- A list of tracks you want abcde to process. If this
isn't specified, abcde will process the entire CD. Accepts ranges
of track numbers - "abcde 1-5 7 9" will process tracks 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 7, and 9.
OUTPUT¶
Each track is, by default, placed in a separate file named after the track in a
subdirectory named after the artist under the current directory. This can be
modified using the OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT variables in your
abcde.conf. Each file is given an extension identifying its compression
format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac', '.spx', '.mpc', '.aac' or
'.wav'.
CONFIGURATION¶
abcde sources two configuration files on startup -
/etc/abcde.conf
and
$HOME/.abcde.conf, in that order.
The configuration options stated in those files can be overridden by providing
the appropriate flags at runtime.
The configuration variables have to be set as follows:
- VARIABLE=value
- Except when "value" needs to be quoted or
otherwise interpreted. If other variables within "value" are to
be expanded upon reading the configuration file, then double quotes should
be used. If they are only supposed to be expanded upon use (for example
OUTPUTFORMAT) then single quotes must be used.
- All shell escaping/quoting rules apply.
- Here is a list of options abcde recognizes:
- CDDBMETHOD
- Specifies the method we want to use to retrieve the track
information. Two values are recognized: "cddb" and
"musicbrainz". The "cddb" value needs the CDDBURL and
HELLOINFO variables described below. The "musicbrainz" value
uses the Perl helper script abcde-musicbrainz-tool to establish a
conversation with the Musicbrainz server for information retrieval.
- CDDBURL
- Specifies a server to use for CDDB lookups.
- CDDBPROTO
- Specifies the protocol version used for the CDDB retrieval
of results. Version 6 retrieves CDDB entries in UTF-8 format.
- HELLOINFO
- Specifies the Hello information to send to the CDDB server.
The CDDB protocol requires you to send a valid username and hostname each
time you connect. The format of this is username@hostname.
- CDDBLOCALDIR
- Specifies a directory where we store a local CDDB
repository. The entries must be standard CDDB entries, with the filename
being the DISCID value. Other CD playing and ripping programs (like Grip)
store the entries under ~/.cddb and we can make use of those
entries.
- CDDBLOCALRECURSIVE
- Specifies if the CDDBLOCALDIR has to be searched
recursively trying to find a match for the CDDB entry. If a match is found
and selected, and CDDBCOPYLOCAL is selected, it will be copied to the root
of the CDDBLOCALDIR if CDDBLOCALPOLICY is "modified" or
"new".
- CDDBLOCALPOLICY
- Defines when a CDDB entry should be stored in the defined
CDDBLOCALDIR. The possible policies are: "net" for a CDDB entry
which has been received from the net (overwriting any possible local CDDB
entry); "new" for a CDDB entry which was received from the net,
but will request confirmation to overwrite a local CDDB entry found in the
root of the CDDBLOCALDIR directory; "modified" for a CDDB entry
found in the local repository but which has been modified by the user; and
"always" which forces the CDDB entry to be stored back in the
root of the CDDBLOCALDIR no matter where it was found, and no matter it
was not edited. This last option will always overwrite the one found in
the root of the local repository (if any). STILL NOT WORKING!!
- CDDBCOPYLOCAL
- Store local copies of the CDDB entries under the
$CDDBLOCALDIR directory.
- CDDBUSELOCAL
- Actually use the stored copies of the CDDB entries. Can be
overridden using the "-L" flag (if is CDDBUSELOCAL in
"n"). If an entry is found, we always give the choice of
retrieving a CDDB entry from the internet.
- SHOWCDDBFIELDS
- Coma-separated list of fields we want to parse during the
CDDB parsing. Defaults to "year,genre".
- OGGENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Ogg/Vorbis
encoder. Valid options are ´oggenc´ (default for Ogg/Vorbis) and
´vorbize´. This affects the default location of the binary, the
variable to pick encoder command-line options from, and where the options
are given.
- MP3ENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for the MP3 encoder.
Valid options are ´lame´ (default for MP3), ´gogo´,
´bladeenc´, ´l3enc´ and ´mp3enc´. Affects
the same way as explained above for Ogg/Vorbis.
- FLACENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for the FLAC encoder.
At this point only ´flac´ is available for FLAC encoding.
- SPEEXENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for Speex encoder. At
this point only ´speexenc´ is available for Ogg/Speex
encoding.
- MPPENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for MPP/MP+
(Musepack) encoder. At this point we only have ´mppenc´
available, from corecodecs.org.
- AACENCODERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of encoder to use for M4A (AAC)
encoder. At this point we only support ´faac´, so
´default´ points to it.
- NORMALIZERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of normalizer to use. Valid options are
´default´ and ´normalize' (and both run
´normalize-audio´), since we only support it, ATM.
- CDROMREADERSYNTAX
- Specifies the style of cdrom reader to use. Valid options
are ´cdparanoia´, ´debug´ and ´flac´. It is
used for querying the CDROM and obtain a list of valid tracks and DATA
tracks. The special ´flac´ case is used to "rip" CD
tracks from a single-track flac file.
- CUEREADERSYNTAX
- Specifies the syntax of the program we use to read the CD
CUE sheet. Right now we only support ´mkcue´, but in the future
other readers might be used.
- KEEPWAVS
- It defaults to no, so if you want to keep those wavs ripped
from your CD, set it to "y". You can use the "-k"
switch in the command line. The default behaviour with KEEPWAVS set is to
keep the temporary directory and the wav files even you have requested the
"clean" action.
- PADTRACKS
- If set to "y", it adds 0's to the file numbers to
complete a two-number holder. Useful when encoding tracks 1-9.
- INTERACTIVE
- Set to "n" if you want to perform automatic rips,
without user intervention.
- NICE VALUES
- Define the values for priorities (nice values) for the
different CPU-hungry processes: encoding (ENCNICE), CDROM read (READNICE)
and distributed encoder with distmp3 (DISTMP3NICE).
- PATHNAMES
- The following configuration file options specify the
pathnames of their respective utilities: LAME, TOOLAME, GOGO, BLADEENC,
L3ENC, XINGMP3ENC, MP3ENC, VORBIZE, OGGENC, FLAC, SPEEXENC, MPPENC,
AACEND, ID3, ID3V2, EYED3, METAFLAC, CDPARANOIA, CDDA2WAV, CDDAFS,
CDDISCID, CDDBTOOL, EJECT, MD5SUM, DISTMP3, VORBISCOMMENT, NORMALIZE,
CDSPEED, MP3GAIN, VORBISGAIN, MPPGAIN, MKCUE, MKTOC, CUE2DISCID (see
option "-X"), DIFF and HTTPGET.
- COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
- If you wish to specify command-line options to any of the
programs abcde uses, set the following configuration file options:
LAMEOPTS, TOOLAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS, BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS, XINGMP3ENCOPTS,
MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS, FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPPENCOPTS,
AACENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, ID3V2OPTS, MP3GAINOPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS,
CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS,
CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS, METAFLACOPTS, DIFFOPTS,
FLACGAINOPTS, VORBISGAINOPTS and HTTPGETOPTS.
- CDSPEEDVALUE
- Set the value of the CDROM speed. The default is to read
the disc as fast as the reading program and the system permits. The steps
are defined as 150kB/s (1x).
- ACTIONS
- The default actions to be performed when reading a
disc.
- CDROM
- If set, it points to the CD-Rom device which has to be used
for audio extraction. Abcde tries to guess the right device, but it may
fail. The special ´flac´ option is defined to extract tracks
from a single-track flac file.
- CDPARANOIACDROMBUS
- Defined as "d" when using cdparanoia with
an IDE bus and as "g" when using cdparanoia with the
ide-scsi emulation layer.
- OUTPUTDIR
- Specifies the directory to place completed tracks/playlists
in.
- WAVOUTPUTDIR
- Specifies the temporary directory to store .wav files in.
Abcde may use up to 700MB of temporary space for each session (although it
is rare to use over 100MB for a machine that can encode music as fast as
it can read it).
- OUTPUTTYPE
- Specifies the encoding format to output, as well as the
default extension and encoder. Defaults to "vorbis". Valid
settings are "vorbis" (or "ogg") (Ogg/Vorbis),
"mp3" (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), "flac" (Free Lossless
Audio Codec), "spx" (Ogg/Speex), "mpc" (MPP/MP+
(Musepack)), "m4a" (for M4A (AAC)) or "wav" (Microsoft
Waveform). Values like "vorbis,mp3" encode the tracks in both
Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 formats. For example
OUTPUTTYPE=vorbis,flac
For each value in OUTPUTTYPE, abcde expands a different process for
encoding, tagging and moving, so you can use the format placeholder,
OUTPUT, to create different subdirectories to hold the different types.
The variable OUTPUT will be 'vorbis', 'mp3', 'flac', 'spx', 'mpc', 'm4a'
and/or 'wav', depending on the OUTPUTTYPE you define. For example
OUTPUTFORMAT='${OUTPUT}/${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}._${TRACKFILE}'
- OUTPUTFORMAT
- Specifies the format for completed Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC,
Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+ (Musepack) or M4A filenames. Variables are included
using standard shell syntax. Allowed variables are GENRE, ALBUMFILE,
ARTISTFILE, TRACKFILE, TRACKNUM, and YEAR. Default is
´${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}-${TRACKFILE}´. Make sure
to use single quotes around this variable. TRACKNUM is automatically
zero-padded, when the number of encoded tracks is higher than 9. When
lower, you can force with '-p' in the command line.
- VAOUTPUTFORMAT
- Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The
default is
'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKFILE}'
- ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
- Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for single-track rips (see
option "-1"). The default is
'${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
- VAONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
- Just like ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists
discs. The default is 'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
- MAXPROCS
- Defines how many encoders to run at once. This makes for
huge speedups on SMP systems. You should run one encoder per CPU at once
for maximum efficiency, although more doesn't hurt very much. Set it
"0" when using mp3dist to avoid getting encoding processes in
the local host.
- LOWDISK
- If set to y, conserves disk space by encoding tracks
immediately after reading them. This is substantially slower than normal
operation but requires several hundred MB less space to complete the
encoding of an entire CD. Use only if your system is low on space and
cannot encode as quickly as it can read.
Note that this option may also help when reading a CD with errors. This is
because on a scratchy disk reading is quite timing sensitive and this
option reduces the background load on the system which allows the ripping
program more precise control.
- BATCHNORM
- If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which
preserves relative volume differences between tracks of an album. Also
enables nogap encoding when using the ´lame´ encoder.
- NOGAP
- Activate the lame's --nogap option, that allows files found
in CDs with no silence between songs (such as live concerts) to be encoded
without noticeable gaps. WARNING: lame's --nogap disables the Xing mp3
tag. This tag is required for mp3 players to correctly display track
lengths when playing variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
- PLAYLISTFORMAT
- Specifies the format for completed playlist filenames.
Works like the OUTPUTFORMAT configuration variable. Default is
´${ARTISTFILE}_-_${ALBUMFILE}.m3u´. Make sure to use single
quotes around this variable.
- PLAYLISTDATAPREFIX
- Specifies a prefix for filenames within a playlist. Useful
for http playlists, etc.
- DOSPLAYLIST
- If set, the resulting playlist will have CR-LF line
endings, needed by some hardware-based players.
- COMMENT
- Specifies a comment to embed in the ID3 or Ogg comment
field of each finished track. Can be up to 28 characters long. Supports
the same syntax as OUTPUTFORMAT. Does not currently support ID3v2.
- REMOTEHOSTS
- Specifies a comma-delimited list of systems to use for
remote encoding using distmp3. Equivalent to -r.
- mungefilename
- mungefilename() is an abcde shell function that can
be overridden via abcde.conf. It takes CDDB data as $1 and outputs
the resulting filename on stdout. It defaults to eating control
characters, apostrophes and question marks, translating spaces and forward
slashes to underscores, and translating colons to an underscore and a
hyphen.
If you modify this function, it is probably a good idea to keep the forward
slash munging (UNIX cannot store a file with a '/' char in it) as well as
the control character munging (NULs can't be in a filename either, and
newlines and such in filenames are typically not desirable).
- mungegenre
- mungegenre () is a shell function used to modify the $GENRE
variable. As a default action, it takes $GENRE as $1 and outputs the
resulting value to stdout converting all UPPERCASE characters to
lowercase.
- pre_read
- pre_read () is a shell function which is executed before
the CDROM is read for the first time, during abcde execution. It
can be used to close the CDROM tray, to set its speed (via
"setcd" or via "eject", if available) and other
preparation actions. The default function is empty.
- post_read
- post_read () is a shell function which is executed after
the CDROM is read (and, if applies, before the CDROM is ejected). It can
be used to read a TOC from the CDROM, or to try to read the DATA areas
from the CD (if any exist). The default function is empty.
- EJECTCD
- If set to "y", abcde will call
eject(1) to eject the cdrom from the drive after all tracks have
been read. It has no effect when CDROM is set to a flac file.
- EXTRAVERBOSE
- If set to "1", some operations which are usually
now shown to the end user are visible, such as CDDB queries. Useful for
initial debug and if your network/CDDB server is slow. Set to
"2" or more for even more verbose output.
EXAMPLES¶
Possible ways one can call
abcde:
- abcde
- Will work in most systems
- abcde -d /dev/cdrom2
- If the CDROM you are reading from is not the standard
/dev/cdrom (in GNU/Linux systems)
- abcde -o vorbis,flac
- Will create both Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC files.
- abcde -o vorbis:"-b 192"
- Will pass "-b 192" to the Ogg/Vorbis encoder,
without having to modify the config file
- abcde -W 1
- For double+ CD settings: will create the 1st CD starting
with the track number 101, and will add a comment "CD 1" to the
tracks, the second starting with 201 and so on.
- abcde -d singletrack.flac
- Will extract the files contained in singletrack using the
embedded cuesheet.
abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
- *
- An Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack) or
M4A encoder (oggenc, vorbize, lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, mp3enc, flac,
speexenc, mppenc, faac)
- *
- An audio CD reading utility (cdparanoia, icedax, cdda2wav,
dagrab)
- *
- cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
- *
- An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl
(Mac OS X, among others). Alternatively, abcde-musicbrainz-tool (which
depends on Perl and some Musicbrainz libraries) can be used to retrieve
CDDB information about the CD.
- *
- (for MP3s) id3 or id3v2, id3 v1 and v2 tagging
programs.
- *
- (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3
encoding.
- *
- (optional) normalize-audio, a WAV file volume
normalizer.
- *
- (optional) a replaygain file volume modifier (vorbisgain,
metaflac, mp3gain, replaygain),
- *
- (optional) mkcue, a CD cuesheet extractor.
SEE ALSO¶
cdparanoia(1),
icedax(1),
cdda2wav(1),
dagrab(1),
normalize-audio(1),
oggenc(1),
vorbize(1),
flac(1),
toolame(1),
speexenc(1),
mppenc(1),
faac(1),
id3(1),
id3v2(1),
wget(1),
fetch(1),
cd-discid(1),
distmp3(1),
distmp3host(1),
curl(1),
mkcue(1),
vorbisgain(1),
mp3gain(1)
AUTHORS¶
Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>, Jesus Climent
<jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>, Colin Tuckley <colint@debian.org>,
Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org> and contributions from many
others.