3 abcde \- Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format.
8 Ordinarily, the process of grabbing the data off a CD and encoding it, then
9 tagging or commenting it, is very involved.
11 is designed to automate this. It will take an entire CD and convert it into
12 a compressed audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless
13 Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack), M4A (AAC) or Opus format(s).
14 With one command, it will:
17 Do a CDDB or Musicbrainz query over the Internet to look up your CD or
18 use a locally stored CDDB entry, or read CD-TEXT from your CD as a
19 fallback for track information
22 Grab an audio track (or all the audio CD tracks) from your CD
25 Normalize the volume of the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
28 Compress to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack), M4A and/or Opus format(s), all in one CD read
31 Comment or ID3/ID3v2 tag
34 Give an intelligible filename
37 Calculate replaygain values for the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
40 Delete the intermediate WAV file (or save it for later use)
47 can also grab a CD and turn it into a single FLAC file with an embedded
48 cuesheet which can be user later on as a source for other formats, and will be
49 treated as if it was the original CD. In a way,
51 can take a compressed backup of your CD collection.
55 Encode the whole CD in a single file. The resulting file uses the CD title
56 for tagging. If the resulting format is a flac file with an embedded cuesheet,
57 the file can be used as a source for creating other formats. Use "\-1 \-o
58 flac \-a default,cue" for obtaining such a file.
61 Comma-delimited list of actions to perform. Can be one or more of: cddb, cue,
62 read, normalize, encode, tag, move, replaygain, playlist, clean. Normalize and
63 encode imply read. Tag implies cddb, read, encode. Move implies cddb, read,
64 encode, tag. Replaygain implies cddb, read, encode, tag and move. Playlist
65 implies cddb. The default is to do all actions except cue, normalize,
66 replaygain and playlist.
69 Enable batch mode normalization. See the BATCHNORM configuration variable.
72 Specifies an additional configuration file to parse. Configuration options
73 in this file override those in \fI/etc/abcde.conf\fR or \fI$HOME/.abcde.conf\fR.
76 Allows you to resume a session for
78 when you no longer have the CD available (\fBabcde\fR will automatically resume if
79 you still have the CD in the drive). You must have already finished at
80 least the "read" action during the previous session.
82 .B \-d [devicename | filename]
83 CD\-ROM block device that contains audio tracks to be read. Alternatively, a
84 single-track flac file with embedded cuesheet.
87 Capture debugging information (you'll want to redirect this \- try 'abcde \-D
91 Erase information about encoded tracks from the internal status file, to enable
92 other encodings if the wav files have been kept.
95 Force the removal of the temporary ABCDETEMPDIR directory, even when we have
96 not finished. For example, one can read and encode several formats, including
97 \'.ogg\', and later on execute a \'move\' action with only one of the given
98 formats. On a normal situation it would erase the rest of those encoded
99 formats. In this case, \fBabcde\fR will refuse to execute such command, except if \-f
103 Enable lame's \-\-nogap option. See the NOGAP variable. WARNING: lame's
104 \-\-nogap disables the Xing mp3 tag. This tag is required for mp3 players to
105 correctly display track lengths when playing variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
108 Get help information.
111 Start [number] encoder processes at once. Useful for SMP systems. Overrides
112 the MAXPROCS configuration variable. Set it to "0" when using \fBdistmp3\fR to avoid
113 local encoding processes.
116 Keep the wav files after encoding.
119 Use the low-diskspace algorithm. See the LOWDISK configuration variable.
122 Use a local CDDB repository. See CDDBLOCALDIR variable.
125 Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by adding CRLF line
126 endings. Some hardware players insist on having those to work.
129 Do not query CDDB database. Create and use a template. Edit the template to
130 provide song names, artist(s), ...
133 Non interactive mode. Do not ask anything from the user. Just go ahead.
135 .B \-o [filetype][:filetypeoptions]
136 Select output type. Can be "vorbis" (or "ogg"), "mp3", "flac", "spx", "mpc",
137 "m4a", "wav" or "opus". Specify a comma-delimited list of output types to obtain
138 all specified types. See the OUTPUTTYPE configuration variable. One can pass
139 options to the encoder for a specific filetype on the command line separating
140 them with a colon. The options must be escaped with double-quotes.
143 Pads track numbers with 0\'s.
146 Use Unix PIPES to read and encode in one step. It disables multiple encodings,
147 since the WAV audio file is never stored in the disc.
150 Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using \fBdistmp3\fR. See
151 the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.
154 List, separated by commas, the fields to be shown in the CDDB parsed entries.
155 Right now it only uses "year" and "genre".
158 Set the speed of the CD drive. Needs CDSPEED and CDSPEEDOPTS set properly
159 and both the program and device must support the capability.
162 Start the numbering of the tracks at a given number. It only affects the
163 filenames and the playlist. Internal (tag) numbering remains the same.
166 Same as \-t but changes also the internal (tag) numbering. Keep in mind that
167 the default TRACK tag for MP3 is $T/$TRACKS so it is changed to simply $T.
170 Set CDDBPROTO to version 5, so that we retrieve ISO-8859-15 encoded CDDB
171 information, and we tag and add comments with Latin1 encoding.
174 Show the version and exit
177 Be more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might give the
178 sensation nothing is happening. Add this more than once to make things
182 Eject the CD when all tracks have been read. See the EJECTCD configuration
186 Use an alternative "cue2discid" implementation. The name of the binary must be
187 exactly that. \fBabcde\fR comes with an implementation in python under the examples
188 directory. The special keyword "builtin" forces the usage of the internal
189 (default) implementation in shell script.
192 Add a comment to the tracks ripped from the CD.
195 Concatenate CD\'s. It uses the number provided to define a comment "CD #" and
196 to modify the numbering of the tracks, starting with "#01". For Ogg/Vorbis and
197 FLAC files, it also defines a DISCNUMBER tag.
200 DEBUG mode: it will rip, using \fBcdparanoia\fR, the very first second of each track
201 and proceed with the actions requested very quickly, also providing some
202 "hidden" information about what happens on the background. CAUTION: IT WILL
203 ERASE ANY EXISTING RIPS WITHOUT WARNING!
206 A list of tracks you want \fBabcde\fR to process. If this isn't specified, \fBabcde\fR
207 will process the entire CD. Accepts ranges of track numbers -
208 "abcde 1-5 7 9" will process tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9.
210 Each track is, by default, placed in a separate file named after the track in a
211 subdirectory named after the artist under the current directory. This can be
212 modified using the OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT variables in your
213 \fIabcde.conf\fR. Each file is given an extension identifying its compression
214 format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac', '.spx', '.mpc', '.aac', '.wav' or '.opus'.
216 \fBabcde\fR sources two configuration files on startup - \fI/etc/abcde.conf\fR and
217 \fI$HOME/.abcde.conf\fR, in that order.
219 The configuration options stated in those files can be overridden by providing
220 the appropriate flags at runtime.
222 The configuration variables have to be set as follows:
225 Except when "value" needs to be quoted or otherwise interpreted. If other
226 variables within "value" are to be expanded upon reading the configuration
227 file, then double quotes should be used. If they are only supposed to be
228 expanded upon use (for example OUTPUTFORMAT) then single quotes must be used.
230 All shell escaping/quoting rules apply.
232 Here is a list of options \fBabcde\fR recognizes:
235 Specifies the method we want to use to retrieve the track information. Two
236 values are recognized: "cddb" and "musicbrainz". The "cddb" value needs the
237 CDDBURL and HELLOINFO variables described below. The "musicbrainz" value uses
238 the Perl helper script \fBabcde-musicbrainz-tool\fR to establish a
239 conversation with the Musicbrainz server for information retrieval.
242 Specifies a server to use for CDDB lookups.
245 Specifies the protocol version used for the CDDB retrieval of results. Version
246 6 retrieves CDDB entries in UTF-8 format.
249 Specifies the Hello information to send to the CDDB server. The CDDB
250 protocol requires you to send a valid username and hostname each time you
251 connect. The format of this is username@hostname.
254 Specifies a directory where we store a local CDDB repository. The entries must
255 be standard CDDB entries, with the filename being the DISCID value. Other
256 CD playing and ripping programs (like Grip) store the entries under \fI~/.cddb\fR
257 and we can make use of those entries.
259 .B CDDBLOCALRECURSIVE
260 Specifies if the CDDBLOCALDIR has to be searched recursively trying to find a
261 match for the CDDB entry. If a match is found and selected, and CDDBCOPYLOCAL
262 is selected, it will be copied to the root of the CDDBLOCALDIR if
263 CDDBLOCALPOLICY is "modified" or "new".
266 Defines when a CDDB entry should be stored in the defined CDDBLOCALDIR. The
267 possible policies are: "net" for a CDDB entry which has been received from the
268 net (overwriting any possible local CDDB entry); "new" for a CDDB entry which
269 was received from the net, but will request confirmation to overwrite a local
270 CDDB entry found in the root of the CDDBLOCALDIR directory; "modified" for a
271 CDDB entry found in the local repository but which has been modified by the
272 user; and "always" which forces the CDDB entry to be stored back in the root of
273 the CDDBLOCALDIR no matter where it was found, and no matter it was not edited.
274 This last option will always overwrite the one found in the root of the local
275 repository (if any). STILL NOT WORKING!!
278 Store local copies of the CDDB entries under the $CDDBLOCALDIR directory.
281 Actually use the stored copies of the CDDB entries. Can be overridden using the
282 "\-L" flag (if is CDDBUSELOCAL in "n"). If an entry is found, we always give
283 the choice of retrieving a CDDB entry from the internet.
286 Coma-separated list of fields we want to parse during the CDDB parsing.
287 Defaults to "year,genre".
290 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Ogg/Vorbis encoder. Valid options
291 are \'oggenc\' (default for Ogg/Vorbis) and \'vorbize\'.
292 This affects the default location of the binary,
293 the variable to pick encoder command-line options from, and where the options
297 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the MP3 encoder. Valid options are
298 \'lame\' (default for MP3), \'gogo\', \'bladeenc\', \'l3enc\' and \'mp3enc\'.
299 Affects the same way as explained above for Ogg/Vorbis.
302 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the FLAC encoder. At this point only
303 \'flac\' is available for FLAC encoding.
305 .B SPEEXENCODERSYNTAX
306 Specifies the style of encoder to use for Speex encoder. At this point only
307 \'speexenc\' is available for Ogg/Speex encoding.
310 Specifies the style of encoder to use for MPP/MP+ (Musepack) encoder. At this
311 point we only have \'mpcenc\' available, from musepack.net.
314 Specifies the style of encoder to use for M4A (AAC) encoder. We support \'faac\'
315 as \'default\' but support is there for neroAacEnc as well.
318 Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Opus encoder. At this point only
319 \'opusenc\' is available for Opus encoding.
322 Specifies the style of normalizer to use. Valid options are \'default\'
323 and \'normalize'\ (and both run \'normalize-audio\'), since we only support it,
327 Specifies the style of cdrom reader to use. Valid options are \'cdparanoia\',
328 \'debug\' and \'flac\'. It is used for querying the CDROM and obtain a list of
329 valid tracks and DATA tracks. The special \'flac\' case is used to "rip" CD
330 tracks from a single-track flac file.
333 Specifies the syntax of the program we use to read the CD CUE sheet. Right now
334 we only support \'mkcue\', but in the future other readers might be used.
337 It defaults to no, so if you want to keep those wavs ripped from your CD,
338 set it to "y". You can use the "\-k" switch in the command line. The default
339 behaviour with KEEPWAVS set is to keep the temporary directory and the wav
340 files even you have requested the "clean" action.
343 If set to "y", it adds 0's to the file numbers to complete a two-number
344 holder. Useful when encoding tracks 1-9.
347 Set to "n" if you want to perform automatic rips, without user intervention.
350 Define the values for priorities (nice values) for the different CPU-hungry
351 processes: encoding (ENCNICE), CDROM read (READNICE) and distributed encoder
352 with \fBdistmp3\fR (DISTMP3NICE).
355 The following configuration file options specify the pathnames of their
356 respective utilities: LAME, TOOLAME, GOGO, BLADEENC, L3ENC, XINGMP3ENC, MP3ENC,
357 VORBIZE, OGGENC, FLAC, SPEEXENC, MPCENC, AACENC, OPUSENC, ID3, EYED3, METAFLAC,
358 CDPARANOIA, CDDA2WAV, PIRD, CDDAFS, CDDISCID, CDDBTOOL, EJECT, MD5SUM, DISTMP3,
359 VORBISCOMMENT, NORMALIZE, CDSPEED, MP3GAIN, VORBISGAIN, MPPGAIN, MKCUE, MKTOC,
360 CUE2DISCID (see option "\-X"), DIFF and HTTPGET.
362 .B COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
363 If you wish to specify command-line options to any of the programs \fBabcde\fR uses,
364 set the following configuration file options: LAMEOPTS, TOOLAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS,
365 BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS, XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS,
366 FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPCENCOPTS, AACENCOPTS, OPUSENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, EYED3OPTS,
367 MP3GAINOPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS, PIRDOPTS, CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS,
368 EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS, CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS,
369 METAFLACOPTS, DIFFOPTS, FLACGAINOPTS, VORBISGAINOPTS and HTTPGETOPTS.
372 Set the value of the CDROM speed. The default is to read the disc as fast as
373 the reading program and the system permits. The steps are defined as 150kB/s
377 The default actions to be performed when reading a disc.
380 If set, it points to the CD-Rom device which has to be used for audio
381 extraction. Abcde tries to guess the right device, but it may fail. The special
382 \'flac\' option is defined to extract tracks from a single-track flac file.
384 .B CDPARANOIACDROMBUS
385 Defined as "d" when using \fBcdparanoia\fR with an IDE bus and as "g" when using
386 \fBcdparanoia\fR with the ide-scsi emulation layer.
389 Specifies the directory to place completed tracks/playlists in.
392 Specifies the temporary directory to store .wav files in. Abcde may use up
393 to 700MB of temporary space for each session (although it is rare to use
394 over 100MB for a machine that can encode music as fast as it can read it).
397 Specifies the encoding format to output, as well as the default extension and
398 encoder. Defaults to "vorbis". Valid settings are "vorbis" (or "ogg")
399 (Ogg/Vorbis), "mp3" (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), "flac" (Free Lossless Audio
400 Codec), "spx" (Ogg/Speex), "mpc" (MPP/MP+ (Musepack)), "m4a" (for M4A (AAC)),
401 "wav" (Microsoft Waveform) or "opus" (Opus Interactive Audio Codec). Values
402 like "vorbis,mp3" encode the tracks in both Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 formats. For example
404 OUTPUTTYPE=vorbis,flac
406 For each value in OUTPUTTYPE, \fBabcde\fR expands a different process for encoding,
407 tagging and moving, so you can use the format placeholder, OUTPUT, to create
408 different subdirectories to hold the different types. The variable OUTPUT will
409 be 'vorbis', 'mp3', 'flac', 'spx', 'mpc', 'm4a' and/or 'wav', depending on the
410 OUTPUTTYPE you define. For example
412 OUTPUTFORMAT='${OUTPUT}/${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}._${TRACKFILE}'
415 Specifies the format for completed Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+
416 (Musepack) or M4A filenames. Variables are included using standard shell
417 syntax. Allowed variables are GENRE, ALBUMFILE, ARTISTFILE, TRACKFILE,
418 TRACKNUM, and YEAR. Default is \'${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}-${TRACKFILE}\'.
419 Make sure to use single quotes around this variable. TRACKNUM is automatically
420 zero-padded, when the number of encoded tracks is higher than 9. When lower,
421 you can force with '\-p' in the command line.
424 Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The default is 'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKFILE}'
426 .B ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
427 Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for single-track rips (see option "\-1"). The default is '${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
429 .B VAONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
430 Just like ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The default is 'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
433 Defines how many encoders to run at once. This makes for huge speedups
434 on SMP systems. You should run one encoder per CPU at once for maximum
435 efficiency, although more doesn't hurt very much. Set it "0" when using
436 mp3dist to avoid getting encoding processes in the local host.
439 If set to y, conserves disk space by encoding tracks immediately after
440 reading them. This is substantially slower than normal operation but
441 requires several hundred MB less space to complete the encoding of an
442 entire CD. Use only if your system is low on space and cannot encode as
443 quickly as it can read.
445 Note that this option may also help when reading
446 a CD with errors. This is because on a scratchy disk reading is quite timing
447 sensitive and this option reduces the background load on the system which
448 allows the ripping program more precise control.
451 If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which preserves relative
452 volume differences between tracks of an album. Also enables nogap encoding
453 when using the \'lame\' encoder.
456 Activate the lame's \-\-nogap option, that allows files found in CDs with no
457 silence between songs (such as live concerts) to be encoded without noticeable
458 gaps. WARNING: lame's \-\-nogap disables the Xing mp3 tag. This tag is
459 required for mp3 players to correctly display track lengths when playing
460 variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
463 Specifies the format for completed playlist filenames. Works like the
464 OUTPUTFORMAT configuration variable. Default is
465 \'${ARTISTFILE}_\-_${ALBUMFILE}.m3u\'.
466 Make sure to use single quotes around this variable.
468 .B PLAYLISTDATAPREFIX
469 Specifies a prefix for filenames within a playlist. Useful for http
473 If set, the resulting playlist will have CR-LF line endings, needed by some
474 hardware-based players.
477 Specifies a comment to embed in the ID3 or Ogg comment field of each
478 finished track. Can be up to 28 characters long. Supports the same
479 syntax as OUTPUTFORMAT. Does not currently support ID3v2.
482 Specifies a comma-delimited list of systems to use for remote encoding using
483 \fBdistmp3\fR. Equivalent to \-r.
486 mungefilename() is an \fBabcde\fR shell function that can be overridden via
487 \fIabcde.conf\fR. It takes CDDB data as $1 and outputs the resulting filename on
488 stdout. It defaults to eating control characters, apostrophes and
489 question marks, translating spaces and forward slashes to underscores, and
490 translating colons to an underscore and a hyphen.
492 If you modify this function, it is probably a good idea to keep the forward
493 slash munging (UNIX cannot store a file with a '/' char in it) as well as
494 the control character munging (NULs can't be in a filename either, and
495 newlines and such in filenames are typically not desirable).
498 mungegenre () is a shell function used to modify the $GENRE variable. As
499 a default action, it takes $GENRE as $1 and outputs the resulting value
500 to stdout converting all UPPERCASE characters to lowercase.
503 pre_read () is a shell function which is executed before the CDROM is read
504 for the first time, during \fBabcde\fR execution. It can be used to close the CDROM
505 tray, to set its speed (via "setcd" or via "eject", if available) and other
506 preparation actions. The default function is empty.
509 post_read () is a shell function which is executed after the CDROM is read
510 (and, if applies, before the CDROM is ejected). It can be used to read a TOC
511 from the CDROM, or to try to read the DATA areas from the CD (if any exist).
512 The default function is empty.
515 If set to "y", \fBabcde\fR will call \fBeject\fR(1) to eject the cdrom from the drive
516 after all tracks have been read. It has no effect when CDROM is set to a flac
520 If set to "1", some operations which are usually now shown to the end user
521 are visible, such as CDDB queries. Useful for initial debug and if your
522 network/CDDB server is slow. Set to "2" or more for even more verbose
525 Possible ways one can call \fBabcde\fR:
528 Will work in most systems
530 .B abcde \-d /dev/cdrom2
531 If the CDROM you are reading from is not the standard \fI/dev/cdrom\fR (in GNU/Linux systems)
533 .B abcde \-o vorbis,flac
534 Will create both Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC files.
536 .B abcde \-o vorbis:"-b 192"
537 Will pass "\-b 192" to the Ogg/Vorbis encoder, without having to modify the
541 For double+ CD settings: will create the 1st CD starting with the track number
542 101, and will add a comment "CD 1" to the tracks, the second starting with 201
545 .B abcde \-d singletrack.flac
546 Will extract the files contained in singletrack using the embedded cuesheet.
548 \fBabcde\fR requires the following backend tools to work:
551 An Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack), M4A encoder or Opus encoder (oggenc, vorbize, lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, mp3enc, flac, speexenc, mpcenc, faac, neroAacEnc, opusenc).
554 An audio CD reading utility (cdparanoia, icedax, cdda2wav, pird,
555 dagrab). To read CD-TEXT information, icedax or cdda2wav will be
559 cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
562 An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (Mac OS X,
563 among others). Alternatively, abcde-musicbrainz-tool (which depends on
564 Perl and some Musicbrainz libraries) can be used to retrieve CDDB
565 information about the CD.
568 (for MP3s) id3 or eyeD3, id3 v1 and v2 tagging programs.
571 (optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
574 (optional) normalize-audio, a WAV file volume normalizer.
577 (optional) a replaygain file volume modifier (vorbisgain, metaflac, mp3gain, replaygain),
580 (optional) mkcue, a CD cuesheet extractor.
587 .BR normalize-audio (1),
607 Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>,
608 Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>,
609 Colin Tuckley <colint@debian.org>,
610 Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org> and contributions from many others.