DCD(1)DCD(1)NAMEdcd - play audio CDs, program CD-ROM as a smart CD player
SYNOPSISdcd [options] [track-list]
DESCRIPTIONdcd will help you use your CD-ROM drive as a CD player under Linux. In
addition to merely playing CDs, dcd can also play random tracks, accept
a pre-programmed list of tracks, and generally do most of the things a
good portable CD player is capable of.
OPTIONS
dir List a directory of the CD contents (track numbers and
playing times, and track names if they are available).
This option causes dcd to exit immediately.
eject Open the CD-ROM tray, and exit immediately. dcd tries to
locate, and kill, other dcd processes that may be run‐
ning.
help Display a friendly help message, and exit.
info Display one line of information about the current CD,
like this:
Playing track 3 (of 15), length 5:35 (of 77:05)
This option causes dcd to exit immediately.
pause Pause or resume the current CD, exiting immediately.
stop Stop the CD currently in the player. stop makes a reason‐
able effort to locate, and kill, other dcd processes that
may be running.
version
Report the version of dcd and a brief copyright notice,
and exit immediately.
a Print the number of the first track of the CD to stdout,
and exit immediately. Comes in handy for various shell
scripts.
z Print the number of the last track of the CD to stdout,
and exit immediately. Comes in handy for various shell
scripts.
loop Loop the tracks in the track list, or the entire CD if no
tracks are specified. An effort is made to locate, and
kill, other dcd processes. (Having two copies of dcd run‐
ning, each with different looped track lists, could get
very strange very quickly.)
quit Normally, dcd does everything it can to get out of the
way quickly, freeing up the console or xterm it was
launched from and allowing you to get on with your day.
Specifying quit inhibits this; i.e. dcd will NOT exit
until it's done. This lets you use dcd in things like
combined CD/MP3 playlists. dcd attempts to detect unwise
combinations of commands (like loop and random, which
would effectively create an infinite loop) and nip them
in the bud.
random Play randomly-selected tracks from the CD forever (until
killed), and return to the console immediately. As with
loop, an effort is made to deal with other rogue dcd
tasks. This option may accept a tracklist.
x Display the CD Index discid for the CD, exiting immedi‐
ately. This isn't often useful by itself, but might be
useful in a script of some sort.
back Go to the previous track on the CD. If you're already on
the first track, this loops around to the last track. As
with many other options, we attempt to locate and kill
other instances of dcd.
forward
Go to the next track on the CD. If you're already on the
last track, this loops around to the first track. As with
many other options, we attempt to locate and kill other
instances of dcd.
kill Kills off other known instances of dcd. Might be useful
in a shell script, or just in case dcd somehow gets car‐
ried away and starts doing weird things.
EXAMPLESdcd Plays a CD, plain and simple.
dcd 2 Stars playing a CD from track 2.
dcd loop
Plays the whole CD, over and over and over, until killed
(with dcd stop).
dcd loop 2 4 7
Plays tracks 2, 4, and 7, over and over, in that order.
dcd random
Plays random tracks from the CD, over and over and
over...
dcd random 1 3 5 7 9 12
Randomly selects from the tracks listed, and plays 'em
over and over...
dcd 4 6 quit
Plays tracks 4 and 6, then exits. (Normally, dcd will
return you to a shell prompt immediately; this option is
useful for some scripts, combination MP3/CD playlists,
and other cool stuff.)
BUGSdcd doesn't make nearly as many error/sanity checks as it could.
It assumes you know what you're doing, so trying to eject a CD
when the tray is already open (as one example) could have unde‐
fined results. It shouldn't do anything truly bad, but under the
terms of the GNU General Public License anything it somehow does
isn't my fault.
dcd unfortunately now requires Internet access to work. Blame
the people at MusicBrainz for that one. When they discontinued
their lean, sexy "CD Index" project in favor of the current
project, things got a lot less pleasant for everyone involved
(except perhaps for them). Fortunately, broadband access is
rather more common these days, so hopefully this isn't as much
of a problem as it would have been a couple years back.
SEE ALSOcdcd(1), workbone(1)URL
The dcd home page is currently at:
http://www.technopagan.org/dcd/
TRIVIA
`dcd' stands for Dave's CD player.
AUTHORSdcd was written by David E. Smith <dave@technopagan.org>. In
analphabetical order, the following people contributed really
keen ideas (and in some cases, actual code): Scott Walker, Luc
Vrancx, Robert Tol, Kevin Thompson, Nigel Stepp, Othmar Pasteka,
Markus F.X.J. Oberhumer, Mario Moder, Lorenz Minder, Lalo Mar‐
tins, Britton Kerin, Alvaro Herrera, Anders Semb Hermansen,
Shane Henthorne, Boris Gjenero, Aidan Delaney, Izak Burger, Don
Barber, and Jens Axboe.
dcd-0.98 15 June 2002 DCD(1)
