4 abcde is a frontend command-line utility (actually, a shell script) that
5 grabs tracks off a CD or a singletrack flac file with an embedded cuesheet,
6 encodes them to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, M4A, Opus, WavPack,
7 Monkey's Audio (ape), MPP/MP+(Musepack) and/or AIFF format, and tags
10 Your finished Ogg/MP3/FLAC/Speex/M4A/Opus,WavPack/Ape/MPP/AIFF's are, by default,
11 stored in a subdirectory of the current directory (named after the artist)
12 with a filename based on the track title. Spaces are replaced by underscores,
13 and apostrophes and control codes are filtered out. Colons are replaced with
14 an underscore and a hyphen. The end result usually looks like:
15 Our_Lady_Peace/01.Supermans_Dead.ogg. This filename munging is customizable,
16 edit the mungefilename function in your abcde.conf to change it.
18 abcde also has the ability to search for and download suitable album art as
19 well as automatically embed the album art into the tracks of some containers.
21 Many of the questions related of problems executing abcde have been moved to the
22 FAQ, which should be distributed along with this package. Refer to that file
29 * More fixes to Musicbrainz code
32 * Fixes in Musicbrainz code
35 * Allow for embedding of album art downloaded by the getalbumart fuction
36 * Add support for another output encoding: Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF)
37 * Reworked CD lookup code to fully support using all of CDDB,
38 Musicbrainz and CD-Text
39 * Correct Musicbrainz ID calculation for discs where PREGAP is non-zero
40 * Add initial Irix support
41 * Musicbrainz support now depends on WebService::MusicBrainz 1.x to
42 support the v2 MusicBrainz web API
43 * Major refactoring and shell quoting fixes
44 * Many other bug fixes - see the changelog for a full list
47 * Fix for stupid bug introduced in abcde-musicbrainz-tool in 2.8
50 * Add support for using multiple CD lookup services in order
51 * Switch from cddb to musicbrainz as the default CD lookup service
52 * Lots more bugs fixes - see the changes for more details.
55 * Support for output to the Matroska container (mka).
56 * Add id3tag mp3 tagger as this is the tagger available to
58 * Several bug fixes. See the changelog for more details.
61 * Rewrite and improvement of the abcde Makefile.
62 * Support added for True Audio encoding.
63 * Support added for encoding to MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (mp2) with either
65 * Support added for encoding to WavPack with FFmpeg.
66 * Support added for encoding to m4a with either FFmpeg or avconv. This
67 allows usage of the FFmpeg / avconv native alac encoder.
68 * Support added for AAC encoding with fhgaacenc via Wine.
69 * Support added for AAC encoding with qaac via Wine. (Also alac encoding
70 with the open source refalac).
71 * Several bug fixes. See the changelog for more details.
74 * Rewrite of the mungefilename function.
75 * Support added for downloading album art.
76 * Support added for ripping with libcdio (cd-paranoia).
77 * Some error checking and a small help file added to abcde-musicbrainz-tool.
78 * Substantial renovations of m4a encoding with a choice now between encoding
79 with faac, NeroAacEnc and fdkaac.
80 * Fixes to USEPIPES with the addition of several new encoders and rippers.
81 Details on USEPIPES now available in the abcde FAQ doc.
82 * Support added for encoding with Monkey's Audio (ape), tagging is with
84 * Support added for encoding with WavPack.
85 * mp3 tagging renovated with version sniffing differentiating between eyeD3
86 versions. Tagging formalised with options now for id3, id3v2 and eyeD3.
87 * Many, many bug fixes. See the changelog for more details.
93 * Added working support for Musicbrainz using a perl helper script.
96 * Read TOC entries from the CD. The default uses cdrdao. The program mkcue is
98 * Possibility to use CDDBCHOICE1,CDDBCHOICE2 (i.e., 1,3) to get a diff of two
100 * Added SHOWCDDBFIELDS to define whether to show the YEAR and GENRE fields from
102 * Added the possibility of embeding a cuesheet on a singletrack flac file. A
103 single BACKUP flag is most likely needed to use all the needed flags:
104 "abcde -1 -o flac -a default,cue"
105 * Added the possibility of using a singletrack flac file with an embedded
106 cuesheet as a source to extract tracks from (use -X to specify an external
107 CUE2DISCID implementation; check under examples in the distributed source
109 * Added replaygain for Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC.
110 * Added M4A encoding.
111 * Uses the default found $CDROMREADER instead of forcing cdparanoia when
112 cdda2wav is installed.
113 * BATCH mode has been split into two options: BATCHNORM and NOGAP.
114 * Added -U option for non-UNICODE (non UTF-8) tag encoding.
115 * Added -z for debug.
116 * Added -f to force the removal of left files.
117 * CUE support has changed from a flag (-M) to an action (cue).
120 * Support for mkcue, to create a CUE sheet of the CD structure. It can be used
121 with "-1" to create a backup, so that later the original CD can be recreated.
122 * New -o <output(1)>:<options(1)>,... way of passing specific options to an
123 output. Now we can pass specific options without having to modify a config
124 file. This feature was already present in the last versions of the 2.2 cycle.
125 * Unix PIPEs, as a second way to encode files with a low disc space.
126 * Option to erase the "encoded" entries from the status file. Allows one to
127 encode the wav files (in case they were not erased) into another format. This
128 is needed until status information is stored for each format.
129 * The "ogg" output mode will be substituted for "vorbis" in the near future.
130 This release adds a compatibility layer so that both entries work.
131 * The FLAC encoder forces the files to be overwritten, in case they previously
132 exists. This avoids a half-through abcde run to continue without errors in
133 case it was cancelled during the FLAC encoding.
134 * Added a post_read() function so that we can do things with the CD before we
139 * Support for MPP/MP+(Musepack) format. It can be downloaded from
140 corecodecs.org. It is supposed to be Free (not only free), and released under
142 * New "-t <number>" option for starting the numbering of the output files at a
143 given starting number. Ideal for albums with more than one CD.
144 * New "-T <number>" option, similar to "-t" but also modifies the tag entries
145 on the files themselves.
146 * New "-w <COMMENT>" to add a comment to the tracks of a given CD rip. Use
148 * New "-W <number>" option to combine both a comment with "CD #number" and a
149 starting number for both the tracks and the tags with "#01" (that is, 101 for
150 the 1st CD, 201 for the second...)
151 * Support for keeping an existing playlist (and not add new entries to it),
152 erase the existing one (overwrite) or append new entries to the existing
154 * Under ./examples you will find a very basic way to make abcde run in the
155 background and start a non-interactive rip of a CD, if it can find an
156 audio CD in the tray.
157 The abcded script depends on eject and cdparanoia being installed in your
159 * New mungegenre function to switch off (or modify) the default behaviour of
160 transforming uppercase characters to lowercase.
161 * cdparanoia permits performing a query to the CD drive and obtain a list of
162 valid audio tracks. So, now we perform such query and process the results.
163 * Support for "None of the above" has been added with the "0" selection. A
164 template is created, and the selection to edit it is defaulted to "y".
166 New options in 2.1.19:
168 * ONETRACK mode has been introduced. Setting the flag "-1" will create a
169 single file with all the tracks from the CD.
173 * CDSPEED option defaults to eject. However, since cdparanoia has a built-in
174 option to set the speed, we use it. There is not way (right now) to force the
175 use of eject, but it will be introduced in a future release. Also one can use
176 the pre_read function to set the speed with other program.
178 New options in 2.1.16:
180 * -S, CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS for setting the speed of the CDROM. One can set
181 the options in abcde.conf and pass the value on the command line. This option
182 can be used with "eject -x <speed>", "setcd -x <speed>" or the built-in
183 cdparanoia option "-S <speed>", if the CD reader supports it.
184 * Added a pre-read function. Modify it at your pleasure in abcde.conf
185 One can use it to close the CD drive.
186 * -m option, to modify the playlist to include CRLF in every line. Some players
187 insist on having those to work properly with playlists.
189 New options in 2.1.15:
191 * -V can be used to obtain some more information about the CDDB queries.
192 * -v shows the version, basic help, and exits.
194 New options from 2.1.10 to 2.1.13:
196 * CDROMID has been introduced for cdda2wav use with SCSI devices.
197 * Use -L to retrieve the CDDB entries from a local repository (also one can
198 set CDDBUSELOCAL in the config file).
199 * If CDDBCOPYLOCAL is set to "y" we store copies of the CDDB entries, under
200 CDDBLOCALDIR (defaults to "~/.cddb).
202 Modifications from 2.1.9 to 2.1.10:
204 * Initial (still incomplete) MacOSX support is on the works.
205 * A new tool (curl) has been added for MacOSX compatibility, as HTTPGET
208 Options modified from 2.1.8 to 2.1.9:
210 * KEEPWAVS option now sets the clean to "no".
212 Options added/modified from 2.1.3 to 2.1.5:
214 * Ogg/Speex added. Use "-o spx" to rip your audiobooks, for instance.
216 Options added/modified from 2.1.1 to 2.1.3:
218 * WGET has been substituted by HTTPGET. Now we support fetch as retrieval
220 * KEEPWAVS has been introduced. Set it to "y" and the wav tracks will be
222 * CDDBPROTO is used to specify the protocol level in the CDDB retrieval.
223 * DAGRAB has been introduced as a cd ripper.
225 Options added/modified from 2.0.3 to 2.1.x:
227 * -b use batch processing. It uses normalize-audio to adjust the volume of
228 the songs, and a -g gapless option from lame to remove gaps. Only available
229 for mp3+lame combination.
230 * a new "normalize" option has been added to -a, to normalize the volume.
231 * -o works now with a combination of the different outputs: ogg, mp3, flac.
232 Combine them separated by ",". Example: "-o ogg,flac".
233 * OUTPUTTYPE is no longer used for the output file type. From version 2.1 abcde
234 implements multiple-output and the file type is always appended at the end of
235 the file. The OUTPUT variable can be used in the PLAYLISTFORMAT and
236 OUTPUTFORMAT to create different directory structures and playlist names for
237 each of the output formats selected.
239 * DYEAR can be used as DiskYear value in CDDB data. If the data is not supplied
240 by the CDDB server, it can be added.
242 Other options that changed from 1.x to 2.x:
244 * -e doesn't exist anymore, abcde now presents you with all of the cddb data
245 and asks you if you want to edit it. If you don't want to be asked,
246 use -N or INTERACTIVE=n
247 * The output type defaults to Ogg/Vorbis. Specify -o mp3 or OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
248 if you still want to output mp3's.
249 * -l 2 is now just -l, LOWDISK=2 should now be LOWDISK=y
250 * -V and -v are gone, abcde will now prompt you if you'd like to use Various
251 Artists handling, after showing you the cddb data.
252 * -P is now '-a playlist,clean', PLAYLISTONLY=y is now
253 ACTIONS=playlist,clean
254 * -p is now '-a playlist,move,clean', PLAYLIST=y is now
255 ACTIONS=playlist,move,clean
256 * cddb-tool has been cleaned up a little bit. 'get' is now 'query' and
257 'read', and the tempfile handling has been removed.
258 * ID3COMMENT is now COMMENT.
259 * FreeDB is now the default CDDB database.
265 abcde requires the following backend tools to work:
267 * An Ogg/Vorbis encoder (oggenc, the default, or vorbize) or:
268 * An MP3 encoder (lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, etc) or:
269 * A FLAC encoder (flac) or:
270 * An Ogg/Speex encoder (speexenc) or:
271 * An MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (mpcenc) or:
272 * An AAC encoder (faac, NeroAacEnc, fdkaac) or:
273 * An Opus encoder )opusenc) or:
274 * A Monkey's Ausio encoder (mac) or:
275 * A WavPack encoder (wavpack)
276 * normalize-audio for volume normalization.
277 * CD Paranoia, an audio CD reading utility or:
278 * icedax/cdda2wav, the audio CD reading utility cdparanoia was born from or:
279 * cd-paranoia, an audio cd reading utility, courtesy of GNU libcdio or:
280 * dagrab, another audio CD reading utility.
281 * cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program. Formerly bundled with abcde.
282 It's available in Debian or http://linukz.org/cd-discid.shtml
283 * An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (MacOSX)
284 * id3, an id3 tagging program. Available at: http://lly.org/~rcw/id3/
285 * eyeD3, an id3 version 2.0 tagger. http://eyed3.nicfit.net/
286 * (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
287 You can get distmp3 at http://wlug.westbo.se/medlprog/medlprog.html
289 Abcde's mailing list is abcde-users@lists.einval.com. Visit
291 https://lists.einval.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/abcde-users
293 to subscribe. Posts from non-subscribers are moderated to prevent
296 Abcde's current page is at https://abcde.einval.com/ and the latest
297 upstream code is in git at https://git.einval.com/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?p=abcde.git
300 Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org>
301 Andrew Strong <andrew.david.strong@gmail.com>
303 abcde was originally created by Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>