abcde — A Better CD Encoder

ABCDE is a nice CD ripper/encoder utility for Linux.

It's all nice and automatic, and I managed to configure it to suit my mp3 management style pretty quickly. My .abcde.conf file:

OUTPUTDIR=/home/tom/Desktop
OUTPUTTYPE=mp3
LAMEOPTS='-h -b 224'
ACTIONS=default,playlist
OUTPUTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}/${ARTISTFILE} - ${TRACKFILE}'
VAOUTPUTFORMAT='Various/${ARTISTFILE} - ${TRACKFILE}'
PLAYLISTFORMAT='${ARTISTFILE}/${ARTISTFILE} - ${ALBUMFILE}.m3u'
VAPLAYLISTFORMAT='Various/Various - ${ALBUMFILE}.m3u'

That sets it up to rip to mp3s at 224kbs and write out a playlist file. The files are saved onto the desktop to test before I move them to my mp3 folder in the "Artist/Artist - Track.mp3" name format that I prefer.

mungefilename () {
 echo "$@" | sed s,:,\ --\ ,g | sed s,/,\ --\ ,g | tr \* + | tr -d \"\?\[:cntrl:\]
}

I also changed the filename processing so that colons and forward slashes are converted to double dashes (my scripts use single dashes to split the artist from the track title.) And I don't convert spaces to underscores and I leave single quotes alone.

MAXPROCS=2

Runs an encoder process on each core so it goes super fast.

I run it from an icon on the desktop with the following command line:

gnome-terminal -x abcde

Update: I just discovered the "gnome-terminal -x" is unnecessary, there's an option to launch an application in a terminal window automatically...