abcde

abcde (a better CD encoder) is a Linux terminal program for ripping CD's. It can automagically search for Music Metadata and encode the Music in various different formats.

Install (Debian)

abcde is available in the official Repository. The --no-install-recommends should be used, because x11 will otherwise be installed.

A package for the target codec should also be installed

• vorbis-tools for OGG. This is the default.
• flac for FLAC files.
• lame for MP3 files.

apt install abcde flac --no-install-recommends

Usage

Config

The config file for abcde is located under ~/.abcde.conf.

Example Config for FLAC. Extracted music will be used under ~/Music grouped by Album name.

OUTPUTTYPE=flac
OUTPUTFORMAT='./Music/${ALBUMFILE}/${ARTISTFILE} - ${TRACKFILE}'
VAOUTPUTFORMAT='./Music/${ALBUMFILE}/${ARTISTFILE} - ${TRACKFILE}'
FLACOPTS='-8'
PADTRACKS=y

# Eject CD after reading is complete
EJECTCD=y

Ripping CD's

After the config file is created abcde can be executed and will automatically start ripping the currently inserted Disk. abcde uses "CD Paranoia" to extract the Music and displaying the progress bar. You can see here: https://www.xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#progbar what the different symbols mean.

The -N can be used to make the process non-interactive, abcde will always use the first option for Metadata information.

Moving "cover.jpg" back into the extraction folder

If abcde found a Cover to the CD online, it will apply it to all extracted Tracks and will then create an "albumart_backup" folder inside the target folder. For Jellyfin and other Applications, it is useful to have the cover inside the target folder directly. This can be fixed with a script.

#!/bin/bash

# Set the base directory where your music albums are stored
MUSIC_DIR="./Music"

# Find all albumart_backup directories
find "$MUSIC_DIR" -type d -name "albumart_backup" | while read -r backup_dir; do
    # Get the parent album directory
    album_dir=$(dirname "$backup_dir")
    
    # Check if cover.jpg exists in the backup directory
    if [ -f "$backup_dir/cover.jpg" ]; then
        echo "Moving cover from $backup_dir to $album_dir"
        
        # Move the cover.jpg to the album directory
        mv "$backup_dir/cover.jpg" "$album_dir/"
        
        # Check if the move was successful
        if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
            echo "Successfully moved cover.jpg to $album_dir"
            
            # Remove the now-empty albumart_backup directory
            rm -rf "$backup_dir"
            echo "Removed $backup_dir"
        else
            echo "Failed to move cover.jpg from $backup_dir to $album_dir"
        fi
    else
        echo "No cover.jpg found in $backup_dir"
        # Remove the directory anyway if it's empty or doesn't have cover.jpg
        rm -rf "$backup_dir"
        echo "Removed $backup_dir"
    fi
    
    echo "-----------------------------------"
done

echo "All album art processing completed."