abcde.1

.TH abcde 1 "25 August 2024" "abcde 2.10.1-RC1"
.SH NAME
abcde \- Grab an entire CD and compress it to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, AAC, 
WavPack, Monkey's Audio (ape), MPP/MP+(Musepack), True Audio (tta), MP2 format
and/or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format).
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B abcde
.I [options] [tracks]
.SH DESCRIPTION
Ordinarily, the process of grabbing the data off a CD and encoding it, then
tagging or commenting it, is very involved.
.BR 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 (MP3), Free Lossless
Audio Codec (FLAC), Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack), M4A (AAC) wv (WavPack), 
Monkey's Audio (ape), Opus, True Audio (tta), MPEG Audio Layer II (MP2)
or AIFF (Audio Interchange File Format) format(s).
With one command, it will:
.TP
.B *
Do a CDDB and/or Musicbrainz query over the Internet to look up your CD or
use a locally stored CDDB entry, or read CD-TEXT from your CD if it's available
.TP
.B *
Download the album art appropriate for your music tracks with many
user configurable options for download and post download alterations
including automated embedding of the album art for some containers
.TP
.B *
Grab an audio track (or all the audio CD tracks) from your CD
.TP
.B *
Normalize the volume of the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
.TP
.B *
Compress to Ogg/Vorbis, MP3, FLAC, Ogg/Speex, MPP/MP+(Musepack), M4A, wv (WavPack), 
Monkey's Audio (ape), Opus format(s), True Audio (tta), MP2 or AIFF
(Audio Interchange File Format) all in one CD read
.TP
.B *
Comment or ID3/ID3v2 tag
.TP
.B *
Give an intelligible filename
.TP
.B *
Calculate replaygain values for the individual file (or the album as a single unit)
.TP
.B *
Delete the intermediate WAV file (or save it for later use)
.TP
.B *
Repeat until finished
.P
Alternatively,
.B 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,
.B abcde
can take a compressed backup of your CD collection.
.SH OPTIONS
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-a [actions]
Comma-delimited list of actions to perform. Can be one or more of: cddb, cue,
read, getalbumart, embedalbumart, 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. embedalbumart implies getalbumart.
The default is to do all actions except cue, normalize, replaygain, getalbumart,
embedalbumart and playlist.
.TP
.B \-b
Enable batch mode normalization. See the BATCHNORM configuration variable.
.TP
.B \-B
Enable automatic embedding of album art with certain containers. As of
abcde 2.8.2 supported containers are mp3 (using eyeD3), flac (using
metaflac), m4a (using AtomicParsley), WavPack aka wv (using wvtag) and
experimental support for ogg (using vorbiscomment). This command line
option also calls the getalbumart function. Further details of album art
embedding using the embedalbumart function can be found in the abcde FAQ
document packaged with abcde.
.TP
.B \-c [filename]
Specifies an additional configuration file to parse. Configuration options
in this file override those in \fI/etc/abcde.conf\fR or \fI$HOME/.abcde.conf\fR.
.TP
.B \-C [discid]
Allows you to resume a session for
.I discid
when you no longer have the CD available (\fBabcde\fR 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.
.TP
.B \-d [devicename | filename]
CD\-ROM block device that contains audio tracks to be read. Alternatively, a
single-track flac file with embedded cuesheet.
.TP
.B \-D
Capture debugging information (you'll want to redirect this \- try 'abcde \-D
2>logfile')
.TP
.B \-e
Erase information about encoded tracks from the internal status file, to enable
other encodings if the wav files have been kept.
.TP
.B \-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, \fBabcde\fR will refuse to execute such command, except if \-f
is used.
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-G
Download album art using the getalbumart function. This is best done with
CDDBMETHOD including "musicbrainz", and requires the installation of glyrc.
ImageMagick is an optional but highly recommended package. Further details
of getalbumart can be found in the abcde FAQ document packaged with abcde.
.TP
.B \-h
Get help information.
.TP
.B \-j [number]
Start [number] encoder processes at once. Useful for SMP systems. Overrides
the MAXPROCS configuration variable. Set it to "0" when using \fBdistmp3\fR to avoid
local encoding processes.
.TP
.B \-k
Keep the wav files after encoding.
.TP
.B \-l
Use the low-diskspace algorithm. See the LOWDISK configuration variable.
.TP
.B \-L
Use a local CDDB repository. See the CDDBLOCALDIR variable.
.TP
.B \-m
Create DOS-style playlists, modifying the resulting one by adding CRLF line
endings. Some hardware players insist on having those to work.
.TP
.B \-n
Do not query CDDB database. Create and use a template. Edit the template to
provide song names, artist(s), ...
.TP
.B \-N
Non interactive mode. Do not ask anything from the user. Just go ahead.
.TP
.B \-o [filetype][:filetypeoptions]
Select output type. Can be "vorbis" (or "ogg"), "mp3", "flac", "spx", "mpc", "m4a", 
"wav", "wv", "ape", "opus", "mka" or "aiff".  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.
.TP
.B \-O
When fetching album art, always ask the user if they have a URL or
local file to override whatever album art may have been automatically
selected and downloaded. See the OVERRIDEALBUMARTDOWNLOAD
configuration variable.
.TP
.B \-p
Pads track numbers with 0\'s.
.TP
.B \-P
Use Unix PIPES to read and encode in one step (USEPIPES). This disables multiple
encodings, since the WAV audio file is never stored in the disc. For more detail
on this option see the FAQ document in the source tarball.
.TP
.B \-r [hosts...]
Remote encode on this comma-delimited list of machines using \fBdistmp3\fR. See
the REMOTEHOSTS configuration variable.
.TP
.B \-s [fields...]
List, separated by commas, the fields to be shown in the CDDB parsed entries.
Right now it only uses "year" and "genre".
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-v
Show the version and exit
.TP
.B \-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.
.TP
.B \-w [comment]
Add a comment to the tracks ripped from the CD. If you wish to use
parentheses, these will need to be escaped. i.e. you have to write
"\\(" instead of "(".
.TP
.B \-W [number][,number]
Set the disc number when the CD is part of a set.  This can optionally be
followed by a comma and the total number of discs in the set. Discnumber is
used to modify track numbering, eg track 1 of disc 2 will be numbered as 201. 
These values are also used to set metadata, eg to define a comment "CD #/#". 
For Ogg/Vorbis and FLAC files, it defines a DISCNUMBER tag. For FLAC files it
also defines a DISCTOTAL tag.
.TP
.B \-x
Eject the CD when all tracks have been read. See the EJECTCD configuration
variable.
.TP
.B \-X [cue2discid]
Use an alternative "cue2discid" implementation. The name of the binary must be
exactly that. \fBabcde\fR 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.
.TP
.B \-z
DEBUG mode: it will rip, using \fBcdparanoia\fR, 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!
.TP
.B [tracks]
A list of tracks you want \fBabcde\fR to process. If this isn't specified, \fBabcde\fR
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.
.SH 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
\fIabcde.conf\fR. Each file is given an extension identifying  its compression
format, 'vorbis' for '.ogg', '.mp3', '.flac', '.spx', '.mpc', '.wav', '.wv',
\(aq.ape', '.opus', '.mka' or 'aiff'.
.SH CONFIGURATION
\fBabcde\fR sources two configuration files on startup - \fI/etc/abcde.conf\fR and
\fI$HOME/.abcde.conf\fR, in that order.
.PP
The configuration options stated in those files can be overridden by providing
the appropriate flags at runtime.
.PP
The configuration variables have to be set as follows:
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
All shell escaping/quoting rules apply.
.TP
Here is a list of options \fBabcde\fR recognizes:
.TP
.B CDDBMETHOD
Specifies the methods we want to use to retrieve the track
information. Three values are recognized: "cddb", "musicbrainz" and
"cdtext". List all the methods desired in a comma delimited list and
\fBabcde\fR will attempt them all, returning a list of all search
results. The "cddb" value needs the CDDBURL and HELLOINFO variables
described below. The "musicbrainz" value uses the Perl helper script
\fBabcde-musicbrainz-tool\fR to establish a conversation with the
Musicbrainz server for information retrieval. "cdtext" needs "icedax"
or "cdda2wav" to be installed.
.TP
.B CDDBURL
Specifies a server to use for CDDB lookups.
.TP
.B CDDBPROTO
Specifies the protocol version used for the CDDB retrieval of results. Version
6 retrieves CDDB entries in UTF-8 format.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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 \fI~/.cddb\fR
and we can make use of those entries.
.TP
.B 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". The default "y" is needed for the local
CDDB search to work.
.TP
.B 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!!
.TP
.B CDDBCOPYLOCAL
Store local copies of the CDDB entries under the $CDDBLOCALDIR directory.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B SHOWCDDBFIELDS
Coma-separated list of fields we want to parse during the CDDB parsing.
Defaults to "year,genre".
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B FLACENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for the FLAC encoder. At this point only
\'flac\' is available for FLAC encoding.
.TP
.B MP2ENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for the MPEG-1 Audio Layer II (MP2) encoder.
At this point both \'twolame\' and \'ffmpeg\' are available for MP2 encoding.
.TP
.B SPEEXENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for Speex encoder. At this point only
\'speexenc\' is available for Ogg/Speex encoding.
.TP
.B MPCENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for MPP/MP+ (Musepack) encoder. At this
point we only have \'mpcenc\' available, from musepack.net.
.TP
.B AACENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for M4A (AAC) encoder. We support \'fdkaac\'
as \'default\' as well as FFmpeg or avconv, neroAacEnc, qaac and fhgaacenc. If qaac,
refalac or FFmpeg / avconv are used it is also possible to generate Apple Lossless
Audio Codec (alac) files. Note that qaac, refalac and fhgaacenc are Windows applications
which require Wine to be installed.
.TP
.B TTAENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for True Audio (tts) encoding. We
support \'tta\' as default but the older \'ttaenc\' can be used as well.
.TP
.B WVENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for WavPack. We support \'wavpack\'
as \'default\' but \'ffmpeg'\ is the other option (Note that this is for
FFmpeg only as avconv does not have a native WavPack encoder).
.TP
.B APENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for Monkey's Audio (ape). We support \'mac\',
Monkey's Audio Console, as \'default\'.
.TP
.B OPUSENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Opus encoder. At this point only
\'opusenc\' is available for Opus encoding.
.TP
.B MKAENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for the Matroska or mka container. At this
point only \'ffmpeg\' is available to utilise the mka container. Safe audio codecs
for mka include Vorbis, MP2, MP3, LC-AAC, HE-AAC, WMAv1, WMAv2, AC3, eAC3 and Opus.
See the FAQ document for more information.
.TP
.B AIFFENCODERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of encoder to use for Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF). 
At this point only \'ffmpeg\' is available to utilise the AIFF container. 
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B CDROMREADERSYNTAX
Specifies the style of cdrom reader to use. Valid options are \'cdparanoia\',
\'libcdio'\, \'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 u
sed to "rip" CD tracks from a single-track flac file.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B INTERACTIVE
Set to "n" if you want to perform automatic rips, without user intervention.
.TP
.B NICE VALUES
Define the values for priorities (nice values) for the different CPU-hungry
processes: encoding (ENCNICE), CDROM read (READNICE) and distributed encoder
with \fBdistmp3\fR (DISTMP3NICE).
.TP
.B PATHNAMES
The following configuration file options specify the pathnames of their
respective utilities: LAME, GOGO, BLADEENC, L3ENC, XINGMP3ENC, MP3ENC,
VORBIZE, OGGENC, FLAC, SPEEXENC, MPCENC, WAVEPACK, APENC, OPUSENC, ID3, EYED3,
METAFLAC, CDPARANOIA, CD_PARANOIA, CDDA2WAV, PIRD, CDDAFS, CDDISCID, CDDBTOOL, 
EJECT, MD5SUM, DISTMP3, VORBISCOMMENT, NORMALIZE, CDSPEED, MP3GAIN, VORBISGAIN, 
MPCGAIN, MKCUE, MKTOC, CUE2DISCID (see option "\-X"), DIFF, HTTPGET, GLYRC,
IDENTIFY, DISPLAYCMD, CONVERT, QAAC, WINE, FHGAACENC, ATOMICPARSLEY, FFMPEG,
TWOLAME, MID3V2, TTA and TTAENC.
.TP
.B COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
If you wish to specify command-line options to any of the programs \fBabcde\fR uses,
set the following configuration file options: LAMEOPTS, GOGOOPTS, AIFFENCOPTS,
BLADEENCOPTS, L3ENCOPTS, XINGMP3ENCOPTS, MP3ENCOPTS, VORBIZEOPTS, WAVEPACKENCOPTS, APENCOPTS,
OGGENCOPTS, FLACOPTS, SPEEXENCOPTS, MPCENCOPTS, FAACENCOPTS, NEROAACENCOPTS, FDKAACENCOPTS, 
OPUSENCOPTS, ID3OPTS, EYED3OPTS, MP3GAINOPTS, CDPARANOIAOPTS, CDDA2WAVOPTS, PIRDOPTS, 
CDDAFSOPTS, CDDBTOOLOPTS, EJECTOPTS, DISTMP3OPTS, NORMALIZEOPTS, CDSPEEDOPTS, MKCUEOPTS, 
VORBISCOMMMENTOPTS, METAFLACOPTS, DIFFOPTS, FLACGAINOPTS, VORBISGAINOPTS, HTTPGETOPTS,
GLYRCOPTS, IDENTIFYOPTS, CONVERTOPTS, DISPLAYCMDOPTS, QAACENCOPTS, FHGAACENCOPTS,
ATOMICPARSLEYOPTS, FFMPEGENCOPTS, DAGRABOPTS, TWOLAMENCOPTS and TTAENCOPTS.
.TP
.B 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).
.TP
.B ACTIONS
The default actions to be performed when reading a disc.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B CDPARANOIACDROMBUS
Defined as "d" when using \fBcdparanoia\fR with an IDE bus and as "g" when using
\fBcdparanoia\fR with the ide-scsi emulation layer.
.TP
.B OUTPUTDIR
Specifies the directory to place completed tracks/playlists in.
.TP
.B 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).
.TP
.B 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), "mp2" (MPEG-1 Audio Layer III), "spx" (Ogg/Speex), "mpc" (MPP/MP+ (Musepack),
"m4a" (AAC or ALAC),"wv" (WavPack"), "wav" (Microsoft Waveform), "opus"
(Opus Interactive Audio Codec), "tta" (True Audio), "mka" (Matroska) or
"aiff" (Audio Interchange File Format). Values like "vorbis,mp3" encode
the tracks in both Ogg/Vorbis and MP3 formats. For example:
.br
OUTPUTTYPE=vorbis,flac
.br
For each value in OUTPUTTYPE, \fBabcde\fR 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', mp2, 'wv', 'ape', 'tta', 'wav', 
'mka' and/or 'aiff' depending on the OUTPUTTYPE you define. For example
.br
OUTPUTFORMAT='${OUTPUT}/${ARTISTFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}._${TRACKFILE}'
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B VAOUTPUTFORMAT
Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The default is
\(aqVarious-${ALBUMFILE}/${TRACKNUM}.${ARTISTFILE}-${TRACKFILE}'
.TP
.B ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
Just like OUTPUTFORMAT but for single-track rips (see option "\-1"). The default
is '${ARTISTFILE}-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
.TP
.B VAONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT
Just like ONETRACKOUTPUTFORMAT but for Various Artists discs. The default
is 'Various-${ALBUMFILE}/${ALBUMFILE}'
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B PLAYLISTDATAPREFIX
Specifies a prefix for filenames within a playlist. Useful for http
playlists, etc.
.TP
.B DOSPLAYLIST
If set, the resulting playlist will have CR-LF line endings, needed by some
hardware-based players.
.TP
.B FLACTAGSTARTCASE
If set to y, artist name, album title and track title FLAC tags will be
piped through the munge_Startcase function so all words begin with a capital
letter.
.TP
.B FLACTAGALBUMARTISTTAGNAME
There is no standard for the ALBUM ARTIST tag name or value so these are
configurable. This tag is only set for multi-artist CDs. Defaults to
ALBUMARTIST.
.TP
.B FLACTAGALBUMARTISTVALUE
Defaults to 'Various Artists'
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B REMOTEHOSTS
Specifies a comma-delimited list of systems to use for remote encoding using
\fBdistmp3\fR. Equivalent to \-r.
.TP
.B SIMPLIFYPUNCTUATION
If set to y, the munge_simplify_punctuation function is enabled. You must
also choose y at the 'Edit selected CDDB data' prompt to have the function
applied, otherwise the original CDDB data will be used.
.TP
.B mungefilename
mungefilename() is an \fBabcde\fR shell function that can be overridden via
\fIabcde.conf\fR. It takes CDDB data as $1 and outputs the resulting filename on
stdout. It defaults to deleting any preceding dots to filename, replacing spaces
with an underscore and eating characters which variously Windows and Linux do
not permit.
.br
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).
.br
New to abcde 2.7.3 are the user definable functions mungetrackname, mungeartistname
and mungealbumname which default to mungefilename. These permit finer-grained
control of track name, artist name and album name for the ultra-fastidious.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B munge_fs-safe
munge helper function to remove characters that are not file-system safe or sane
for Windows or Linux.
.TP
.B munge_Startcase
munge helper function to capitalise the first letter of every word. This
helps to prevent duplicate artists and albums.
.TP
.B munge_unicodetoascii
munge helper function to transliterate Unicode to ASCII. This is useful for
filename compatibility and accessibility.
.TP
.B munge_collapsewhitespace
munge helper function to replace multiple spaces with a single space
.TP
.B munge_simplify_punctuation
Convert specific unicode punctuation to ascii.
.TP
.B pre_read
pre_read () is a shell function which is executed before the CDROM is read
for the first time, during \fBabcde\fR 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.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B post_encode
post_encode () is a shell function which is executed after the encoding process.
It can be used to move completed files to another location, run any sort of testing
on the completed files or embed album art if the built in embedding provided by
abcde's embedalbumart function is not to your taste.
The default function is empty.
.TP
.B EJECTCD
If set to "y", \fBabcde\fR will call \fBeject\fR(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.
.TP
.B 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.
.SH EXAMPLES
Possible ways one can call \fBabcde\fR:
.TP
.B abcde
Will work in most systems
.TP
.B abcde \-d /dev/cdrom2
If the CDROM you are reading from is not the standard \fI/dev/cdrom\fR (in GNU/Linux systems)
.TP
.B abcde \-o vorbis,flac
Will create both Ogg/Vorbis and Ogg/FLAC files.
.TP
.B abcde \-o vorbis:"-b 192"
Will pass "\-b 192" to the Ogg/Vorbis encoder, without having to modify the
config file
.TP
.B abcde \-o mp3,flac,m4a,wv,ogg -B
abcde will create mp3, flac, m4a, wv and ogg files and also select
suitable album art, download and embed the album art into all 5 sets of tracks.
.TP
.B 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.
.TP
.B abcde \-d singletrack.flac -o vorbis:"-q 6"
Will extract the files contained in singletrack FLAC file using the embedded
cuesheet and then encode the output files to Ogg/Vorbis with a quality setting of 6.
.SH BACKEND TOOLS
\fBabcde\fR requires the following backend tools to work:
.TP
.B *
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,
fdkaac, neroAacEnc, faac, wavpack, opusenc).
.TP
.B *
An audio CD reading utility (cdparanoia, icedax, cdda2wav, libcdio (cd-paranoia),
pird, dagrab). To read CD-TEXT information, icedax or cdda2wav will be needed.
.TP
.B *
cd-discid, a CDDB DiscID reading program.
.TP
.B *
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.
.TP
.B *
(for MP3s) id3 or eyeD3, id3 v1 and v2 tagging programs.
.TP
.B *
For Monkey's Audio (ape) tagging Robert Muth's 'apetag' is required.
.TP
.B *
To retrieve album art a glyrc package is required and optionally the
ImageMagick package should be installed.
.TP
.B *
(optional) distmp3, a client/server for distributed mp3 encoding.
.TP
.B *
(optional) normalize-audio, a WAV file volume normalizer.
.TP
.B *
(optional) a replaygain file volume modifier (vorbisgain, metaflac, mp3gain, mpcgain, wvgain),
.TP
.B *
(optional) mkcue, a CD cuesheet extractor.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.BR cdparanoia (1),
.BR cd-paranoia (1)
.BR icedax (1),
.BR cdda2wav (1),
.BR twolame (1),
.BR mid3v2 (1),
.BR pird (1),
.BR dagrab (1),
.BR normalize-audio (1),
.BR oggenc (1),
.BR vorbize (1),
.BR flac (1),
.BR speexenc (1),
.BR mpcenc (1),
.BR faac (1),
.BR fdkaac (1),
.BR identify (1),
.BR display (1),
.BR convert (1),
.BR wavpack (1),
.BR wvgain (1),
.BR wvtag (1),
.BR id3 (1),
.BR eyeD3 (1),
.BR wget (1),
.BR fetch (1),
.BR cd-discid (1),
.BR distmp3 (1),
.BR distmp3host (1),
.BR curl (1),
.BR mkcue (1),
.BR vorbisgain (1),
.BR mp3gain (1)

.SH DATA FORMATS
The CDDB metadata format is used a lot by abcde, both for lookups and
internally. It's documented online at
\%http://ftp.freedb.org/pub/freedb/latest/DBFORMAT

.SH FAQ

.TP
.B What is the odd-looking progress indicator when ripping?
\fBcdparanoia\fR is the default ripping program used by abcde on many
platforms, and it tries to give information about the ripping quality
as it runs. See the
.BR cdparanoia (1)
man page for more details, or look online at
\%https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#progbar .

.SH AUTHORS
The main authors and maintainers have been Robert Woodcock
\%<rcw@debian.org>, Jesus Climent \%<jesus.climent@hispalinux.es>,
Colin Tuckley \%<colint@debian.org>, Steve McIntyre
\%<93sam@debian.org>, Andrew Strong \%<andrew.david.strong@gmail.com>,
and there have been lots of contributions from many others over the
years.

If you're looking for help with abcde, the best place in the first
instance is likely to be the mailing list:
\%abcde-users@lists.einval.com.