dekagen(1) Manual Page
Name
dekagen - a frontend to rip, convert and name MP3/Ogg
Synopsis
dekagen
dekagen --version
Description
dekagen is an interactive script that automates the whole process of
ripping data from music compact discs (CD), the naming of the files,
their converting into MP3 or Ogg-Vorbis format, and the labelling of
the MP3 files with an ID3 tag. dekagen uses dialog(1) for a user
interface that is intended to be "intuitive".
Music data is read from CDs using cdda2wav(1), cdparanoia(1),
dagrab(1), or tosha(1), and stored on your harddisk in wav-format.
After this, the wav-data is converted into MP3 format using 8hz-mp3,
bladeenc, l3enc, lame(1), mp3enc, or notlame, or into Ogg-Vorbis format
using oggenc(1). cda(1), which comes within the xmcd(1) package, is
used for CDDB lookups. To label the MP3 files with ID3 tags, id3ed,
id3tag, id3tool(1), mp3info(1), or the built-in capabilities of some
converters are used.
Options
Using any command line option will cause dekagen to print its version
number and exit:
- -V, --version
- Print program version and exit.
All configuration is done interactively from the "Preferences" menu in
the program:
- Change working directory
- Full path to the directory in which all ripping and encoding
will be done. dekagen will check whether you have write-access
to it.
- Choose ripper
- Your preferred ripping tool. dekagen will check whether it is
installed and executable.
If you do not wish to rip any data, but to convert only already
existing wav-files, choose "none" here.
- Choose encoder
- Your preferred MP3-/Ogg-Vorbis-converter. dekagen will check
whether it is installed and executable.
If you do not wish to convert any data, but to rip only wav-files
from audio CDs, choose "none" here.
- Choose ID3 tag tool
- Your preferred ID3 tagging utility. dekagen will check whether
it is installed and executable, and whether it can be used
together with the converter you chose.
When using oggenc(1) as encoder, you can only choose either
"none" or "built-in" here. Besides this, the "built-in" option
can be used only together with lame(1) or notlame.
If you do not wish to have your MP3-/Ogg-files tagged, or if you
do not have an ID3 tagging utility installed, choose "none"
here.
- Toggle between manual or CDDB naming
- Manual naming is used by default. If you have cda(1) installed
and configured on your system correctly, you may choose "cddb"
here, avoiding manual naming for all the files you are going to
rip and encode. cda(1) will connect to the CDDB, either
locally, which requires an already existing entry in your local
CDDB for the CD you are going to rip and encode, or remotely,
which requires a network connection.
- Set XMCD_LIBDIR variable for cda
- Some versions of cda(1) require the XMCD_LIBDIR environment
variable to be set. This can be done here by entering the full
path to the directory cda(1) resides in. If you unset the
option by entering a blank line here, the value of the system's
XMCD_LIBDIR environment variable will not be changed.
- Set file naming convention
- Your preferred file naming convention. Options 5, 6, and 7 cannot
be used with various artists CDs.
- Rip whole CD
- Enable this option if you want to have the whole CD, i.e. any
title on it, to be ripped and encoded.
- Set small hard disk option
- By default, dekagen will rip all selected songs, putting their
encoding into a queue in the background. If you have only a
small hard disk (and only a rather weak processor), you can
enable this option. It will make dekagen to rip one song and
than encode it, before ripping the next one.
- Select your CD-ROM device
- Full path to the device dekagen should use for ripping. dekagen
will check whether it exists.
- Set nominal bitrate for the encoded MP3/Ogg
- Choose the encoding bitrate for your MP3-/Ogg-file. The values
available are limited to those settings that all encoders supported
by dekagen understand.
When using an encoder that uses variable bitrate (VBR) encoding
by default, like oggenc(1) does, this value is used for an average
encoding bitrate, without disabling the default VBR encoding.
Thus, setting this option allows you to determine the
quality and the size of the encoded audio file, without causing
it to be of a quality inferior to that it would have if a corresponding
"quality level" setting was used instead.
Requirements
Either cdda2wav(1), cdparanoia(1), dagrab(1), or tosha(1) to rip data
from the music CD, and either 8hz-mp3, bladeenc, l3enc, lame(1),
mp3enc, or notlame for conversion into MP3 format, or oggenc(1) for
conversion into Ogg-Vorbis format.
To avoid manual naming for all the files, xmcd(1) for CDDB lookups is
recommended, and id3ed, id3tag, id3tool(1), or mp3info(1) to label the
MP3 files with ID3 tags.
ID3 tagging utilities are not needed when using lame(1) or notlame as
converters, because these programs have a built-in ID3 tagging capability.
Labelling of the Ogg-Vorbis files is always done by oggenc(1),
because Ogg-Vorbis has its own tagging system, so no ID3 tagging utilities
have to be used together with oggenc(1).
Author
Current maintainer and primary download location for dekagen is:
Martin Bayer <dekagen[at]mbayer[dot]de>
http://www.mbayer.de/dekagen/
See Also
cda(1), cdda2wav(1), cdparanoia(1), dagrab(1), dialog(1), id3tool(1),
lame(1), mp3info(1), oggenc(1), tosha(1)
Copyright
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
without any warranty; without even the implied warranty of mechantability
or fitness for a particular purpose. See the GNU General Public License for details.
Please note that some of the third-party software supported by dekagen
might have different copyright terms or might even be subject to patent
restrictions.