abcde - Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format.

abcde [options] [tracks]

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 compressed audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+(Musepack). With one command, it will:

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Do a CDDB query over the Internet to look up your CD or use a locally stored CDDB entry

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Grab an audio track (or all the audio CD tracks) from your CD

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Normalize the volume of the individual file (or the album as a single unit)

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Compress to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack) format(s), all in one CD read

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Comment or ID3/ID3v2 tag

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Give an intelligible filename

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Calculate replaygain values for the individual file (or the album as a single unit)

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Delete the intermediate WAV file (or save it for later use)

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Repeat until finished

-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 embeded cuesheet, the file can be used as a source for creating other formats.

-a [actions]

Comma-delimited list of actions to perform. Can be one or more of: cddb, 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 configuration variable.

-c [filename]

Specifies an additional configuration file to parse. Configuration 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 embeded 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.

-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 systems. 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.

-M

Create a CUE file with information about the CD. Together with the possibility of creating a single file (see option "-1"), one can recreate the original CD. If the cuesheet is embeded in a flac single file it can be used as source for encoding other formats.

-o [filetype][:filetypeoptions]

Select output type. Can be "vorbis" (or "ogg"), "mp3", "flac", "spx", "mpc" 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.

-r [hosts...]

Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using distmp3. See the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.

-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 capability.

-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 CDDBPROTOCOL to version 6, so that we retrieve UTF-8 encoded CDDB information, and we tag and add comments with a proper encoding. This flag will be removed and -U will be added to set it to version 5 once version 6 becomes the default.

-v

Show the version and exit

-V

Be a bit more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might give the sensation nothins is happening.

-x

Eject the CD when all tracks have been read. See the EJECTCD configuration variable.

-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 comment "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 specified, 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.

Each track is, by default, placed in a separate file named after the track in a subdirectory named after the artist under the current directory. This can be modified using the OUTPUTFORMAT and VAOUTPUTFORMAT variables in your abcde.conf. Each file is given an extension identifying its compression format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac', '.spx', '.mpc', or '.wav'.

abcde sources two configuration files on startup - /etc/abcde.conf and $HOME/.abcde.conf, in that order.

The configuration options stated on those files can ba overriden by providing

the appropiate 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 reading 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:

CDDBURL

Specifies a server to use for CDDB lookups.

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.

CDDBCOPYLOCAL

Store local copies of the CDDB entries under the $CDDBLOCALDIR directory.

CDDBUSELOCAL

Actually use the stored copies of the CDDB entries. Can be overriden 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.

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 command 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, ID3, ID3V2, EYED3, METAFLAC, CDPARANOIA, CDDA2WAV, CDDAFS, CDDISCID, CDDBTOOL, EJECT, MD5SUM, DISTMP3, VORBISCOMMENT, NORMALIZE, CDSPEED, MP3GAIN, VORBISGAIN, MPPGAIN, MKCUE, MKTOC, DIFF and HTTPGET.

COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS

If you wish to specify command-line options to any of the programs abcde uses, set the following configuration file options: LAMEOPTS, TOOLAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS, BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS, XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS, FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPPENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, ID3V2OPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS, CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS, CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS, 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)) or "wav" (Microsoft 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' and/or 'mpc', depending on the OUTPUTTYPE you define. For example

OUTPUTFORMAT='${OUTPUT}/${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}._${TRACKFILE}'

OUTPUTFORMAT

Specifies the format for completed Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+ (Musepack) filenames. Variables are included using standard shell syntax. Allowed variables are GENRE, ALBUMFILE, ARTISTFILE, TRACKFILE, TRACKNUM, and YEAR. Default is '${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}-${TRACKFILE}'. 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 '-p' in the command line.

VAOUTPUTFORMAT

Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. Default is whatever OUTPUTFORMAT is set to.

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 disables 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 overridden 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 characters 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 initial debug and if your network/CDDB server is slow.

Possible ways one can call abcde

abcde

Will work in most systems

abcde -d /dev/cdrom2

If the CDROM you are reding 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 embeded cuesheet.

abcde requires the following backend tools to work:

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An Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex or MPP/MP+(Musepack) encoder (oggenc, vorbize, lame, gogo, bladeenc, l3enc, mp3enc, flac, speexenc, mppenc)

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An audio CD reading utility (cdparanoia, cdda2wav, dagrab)

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cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.

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An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (Mac OS X, among others).

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(for MP3s) id3 or id3v2, id3 v1 and v2 tagging programs.

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(optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.

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(optional) normalize-audio, a WAV file volume normalizer.

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(optional) a replaygain file volume modifier (vorbisgain, metaflac, mp3gain),

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(optional) mkcue, a CD cuesheet extractor.

cdparanoia(1), cdda2wav(1), dagrab(1), normalize-audio(1), oggenc(1), vorbize(1), flac(1), toolame(1), speexenc(1), mppenc(1), id3(1), id3v2(1), wget(1), fetch(1), cd-discid(1), distmp3(1), distmp3host(1), curl(1), mkcue(1), vorbisgain(1), mp3gain(1)

Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>, Jesus Climent <jesus.climent@hispalinux.es> and contributions from many others.