Provided by: abcde_2.5.4-1_all 
NAME
abcde - Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex and/or MPP/MP+(Musepack)
format.
SYNOPSIS
abcde [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
compressed audio format - Ogg/Vorbis, MPEG Audio Layer III, Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex,
MPP/MP+(Musepack) and/or M4A (AAC) format(s). With one command, it will:
* Do a CDDB or Musicbrainz 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 -o flac -a default,cue" 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 cue, 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 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 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.
-m Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by adding CRLF line endings. Some hardware
players insist on having those to work.
-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.
-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 multiple encodings, since the WAV audio
file is never stored in the disc.
-q [quality]
Use a pre-defined quality level for the encoding process. Defined as low, medium or high. The
"medium" value is used to reset the default values if other are used in the config file(s).
-r [hosts...]
Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using distmp3. See the REMOTEHOSTS
configuration variable.
-s [fields...]
List, separated by commas, 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 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 more verbose. On slow networks the CDDB requests might give the sensation nothing is happening.
Add this more than once to make things even more verbose.
-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) implementation 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 comment "CD #" and to modify the
numbering of the tracks, starting with "#01". For Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files, it also defines a
DISCNUMBER tag.
-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.
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 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', '.aac' or '.wav'.
CONFIGURATION
abcde sources two configuration files on startup - /etc/abcde.conf and $HOME/.abcde.conf, in that order.
The configuration options stated in 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 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 shell escaping/quoting rules apply.
Here is a list of options abcde recognizes:
CDDBMETHOD
Specifies the method we want to use to retrieve the track information. Two values are recognized:
"cddb" and "musicbrainz". The "cddb" value needs the CDDBURL and HELLOINFO variables described
below. The "musicbrainz" value uses the Perl helper script abcde-musicbrainz-tool to establish a
conversation with the Musicbrainz 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 overridden 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 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,
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 programs abcde uses, set the following
configuration file options: LAMEOPTS, TOOLAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS, BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS,
XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, OGGENCOPTS, FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPPENCOPTS,
AACENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, ID3V2OPTS, MP3GAINOPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS, CDDAFSOPTS,
CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS, CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS,
METAFLACOPTS, DIFFOPTS, FLACGAINOPTS, VORBISGAINOPTS 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" (Microsoft Waveform). Values like "vorbis,mp3" encode the tracks in both
Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 formats. For example
OUTPUTTYPE=vorbis,flac
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}/${TRACKNUM}._${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}/${TRACKNUM}-${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. The default is
'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${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}/${ALBUMFILE}'
MAXPROCS
Defines how many encoders to run at once. This makes for huge speedups on SMP systems. You should
run one encoder per CPU at once for maximum efficiency, although more doesn't hurt very much. Set
it "0" when using mp3dist to avoid getting encoding processes in the local host.
LOWDISK
If set to y, conserves disk space by encoding tracks immediately after reading them. This is
substantially slower than normal operation but requires several hundred MB less space to complete
the encoding of an entire CD. Use only if your system is low on space and cannot encode as quickly
as it can read.
Note that this option may also help when reading a CD with errors. This is because on a scratchy
disk reading is quite timing sensitive and this option reduces the background load on the system
which allows the ripping program more precise control.
BATCHNORM
If set to y, enables batch mode normalization, which preserves relative volume differences between
tracks of an album. Also enables nogap encoding when using the ´lame´ encoder.
NOGAP Activate the lame's --nogap option, that allows files found in CDs with no silence between songs
(such as live concerts) to be encoded without noticeable gaps. WARNING: lame's --nogap disables
the Xing mp3 tag. This tag is required for mp3 players to correctly display track lengths when
playing variable-bit-rate mp3 files.
PLAYLISTFORMAT
Specifies the format for completed playlist filenames. Works like the OUTPUTFORMAT configuration
variable. Default is ´${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 "1", 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. Set to "2" or more
for even more verbose output.
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 embedded cuesheet.
BACKEND TOOLS
abcde 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, icedax, cdda2wav, dagrab)
* cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
* An HTTP retrieval program: wget, fetch (FreeBSD) or curl (Mac OS X, among others). Alternatively,
abcde-musicbrainz-tool (which depends on Perl and some Musicbrainz libraries) 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 encoding.
* (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 ALSO
cdparanoia(1), icedax(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@hispalinux.es>, Colin Tuckley
<colint@debian.org>, Steve McIntyre <93sam@debian.org> and contributions from many others.
abcde(1)