ABCDE
=====
abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that
grabs tracks off a CD, encodes them to ogg, flac or mp3 format, and tags them,
all in one go.

Your finished Oggs/Flacs/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 processes 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 flac or OUTPUTTYPE=flac
  if you want non-lossy encoding with flac. 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)
  You can get oggenc from: http://www.xiph.org/ogg/vorbis/download/
* A flac encoder (flac)
  You can get flac from: http://flac.sourceforge.net/
* 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 from: http://www.sulaco.org/mp3/
  You can get gogo from: http://homepage1.nifty.com/herumi/gogo_e.html
  You can get BladeEnc from: http://bladeenc.mp3.no/
  You can get a trial version of mp3enc at:
    http://www.iis.fhg.de/amm/download/mp3enc/index.html
* 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://frantica.lly.org/~rcw/cd-discid/.
* wget, an HTTP retrieval program.
* id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://frantica.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 now has a mailing list - abcde@whimsica.lly.org. All new releases
will be announced there, and Debian bug reports are now directed there.
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.
Archives of this list will be made publically available soon.

To subscribe, put "subscribe" in the subject or body of an email to
"abcde-request@whimsica.lly.org".

Abcde's homepage can be found at http://frantica.lly.org/~rcw/abcde/.
--
Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>
