abcde(1)abcde(1)NAMEabcde - Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC,
Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format.
SYNOPSISabcde [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 com‐
pressed audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless
Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack) and/or M4A (AAC) for‐
mat(s). With one command, it will:
* Do a CDDB 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 -M -o flac" 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 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 configura‐
tion variable.
-c [filename]
Specifies an additional configuration file to parse. Configura‐
tion 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 sys‐
tems. 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.
-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.
-m Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by
adding CRLF line endings. Some hardware players insist on having
those to work.
-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 mul‐
tiple encodings, since the WAV audio file is never stored in the
disc.
-r [hosts...]
Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using
distmp3. See the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.
-R When CDDBLOCALDIR and CDDBUSELOCAL are defined, search recur‐
sively under the defined directory for matches of the CDDB
entry.
-s [fields...]
List, separated by comas, 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 capa‐
bility.
-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 a bit more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might
give the sensation nothing is happening.
-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) implementa‐
tion 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 com‐
ment "CD #" and to modify the numbering of the tracks, starting
with "#01".
-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 speci‐
fied, 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 direc‐
tory. This can be modified using the OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT
variables in your abcde.conf. Each file is given an extension identify‐
ing its compression format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac',
'.spx', '.mpc', '.aac' or '.wav'.
CONFIGURATIONabcde sources two configuration files on startup - /etc/abcde.conf and
$HOME/.abcde.conf, in that order.
The configuration options stated on 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 read‐
ing 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 sh escaping/quoting rules apply.
Here is a list of options abcde recognizes:
CDDBMETHOD
Specifies the method we want to use to retrieve the track infor‐
mation. Two values are recognized: "cddb" and "musicbrainz". The
"cddb" value needs the CDDBURL and HELLOINFO variables described
below. The "musicbrainz" value uses Python to establish a con‐
versation with the 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 over‐
ridden 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 com‐
mand 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 pro‐
grams abcde uses, set the following configuration file options:
LAMEOPTS, TOOLAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS, BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS,
XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS, FLACOPTS,
SPEEXENCOPTS, MPPENCOPTS, AACENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, ID3V2OPTS,
CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS, CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJEC‐
TOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS, CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, VOR‐
BISCOMMMENTOPTS, METAFLACOPTS, DIFFOPTS 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" (Mi‐
crosoft Waveform). Values like "vorbis,mp3" encode the tracks in
both Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 formats.
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}/${TRACK‐
NUM}._${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}/${TRACKNUM}-${TRACK‐
FILE}´. 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
VAOUTPUTFORMAT
Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The
default is 'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTIST‐
FILE}-${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}/${ALBUMFILE}'
MAXPROCS
Defines how many encoders to run at once. This makes for huge
speedups on SMP systems. You should run one encoder per CPU at
once for maximum efficiency, although more doesn't hurt very
much. Set it "0" when using mp3dist to avoid getting encoding
processes in the local host.
LOWDISK
If set to y, conserves disk space by encoding tracks immediately
after reading them. This is substantially slower than normal
operation but requires several hundred MB less space to complete
the encoding of an entire CD. Use only if your system is low on
space and cannot encode as quickly as it can read.
BATCHNORM
If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which preserves
relative volume differences between tracks of an album. Also
enables nogap encoding when using the ´lame´ encoder.
NOGAP Activate the lame's --nogap option, that allows files found in
CDs with no silence between songs (such as live concerts) to be
encoded without noticeable gaps. WARNING: lame's --nogap dis‐
ables the Xing mp3 tag. This tag is required for mp3 players to
correctly display track lengths when playing variable-bit-rate
mp3 files.
PLAYLISTFORMAT
Specifies the format for completed playlist filenames. Works
like the OUTPUTFORMAT configuration variable. Default is
´${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 overrid‐
den 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 charac‐
ters 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 "y", some operations which are usually now shown to
the end user are visible, such as CDDB queries. Useful for ini‐
tial debug and if your network/CDDB server is slow.
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 embed‐
ded cuesheet.
BACKEND TOOLSabcde 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, cdda2wav, dagrab)
* cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
* An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (Mac OS
X, among others). Alternatively, musicbrainz-get-tracks (which
depends on Python) 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 encod‐
ing.
* (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 ALSOcdparanoia(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@hispal‐
inux.es> and contributions from many others.
abcde(1)
