Cretin Documentation

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
SUPPORTED TOOLS
MODES
OPTIONS
CONFIGURATION VARIABLES
CONFIG FILES
FORMAT STRINGS
TIPS AND TRICKS

Distributed Ripping and Encoding
Multiprocessing
Delayed Encoding

AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
BUGS AND KNOWN ISSUES

NAME

Cretin - CD Ripper, Encoder and Tagger with an Inoffensive Name

SYNOPSIS

cretin [options] [mode]

DESCRIPTION

Cretin is a high-performance CD reencoder, handling the ripping, encoding and tagging of audio compact discs to multiple file formats. Cretin can operate standalone; however, its power and purpose are unleashed in distributed and multiprocessed environments. Cretin is highly customizable and supports the use of many encoding and ripping utilities.

Cretin is a command-line application, for maximum flexibility, portability and purity of design.

SUPPORTED TOOLS

Rippers

cdp (cdparanoia)

Encoders

lame, flac, ogg, faac, shn (shorten)

MODES

Cretin has four modes of operation, between zero and one of which must be specified last on the command line:

rip: Rip a CD, queue it for encoding, and eject the disc. Repeat.
enc: Encode songs from the queue until the queue is empty. Exit.
both: Rip a cd, queue it for encoding, launch encoder subprocess, eject the disc. Repeat. This is the default mode of operation.
nop: No operation. Do nothing and exit. This mode is mostly useful in conjunction with the ``-recover'' option.

OPTIONS

Here is a summary of the options the ``cretin'' command accepts:

-h, -help, --help, ---HEEELLLLLP and anything else matching /-h/i: Print a short help message and exit.
-c cfg.var value: Set configuration variable cfg.var to value. May be specified multiple times.
-f cfgfile: Read config file cfgfile. May be specified multiple times.
-recover: Recover from a crashed or interrupted session. This option will requeue songs which did not finish encoding. A warning: do not use this option when there are running encoders. There will be no lasting damage, but unnecessary computation will be performed.

CONFIGURATION VARIABLES

Config variables enable heavy customization of Cretin's operation. Here is a list of variables which may be set by the user:

cfg.rootdir: Root directory, under which all Cretin operations take place.
cfg.encq: Filename, within cfg.rootdir, of encoding queue.
cfg.enclog: Filename, within cfg.rootdir, of in-process encoding log.
cfg.ripdir: Directory, within cfg.rootdir, under which all ripping operations take place.
cfg.encdir: Directory, within cfg.rootdir, under which all encoding operations take place.
cfg.ripdir: Directory, within cfg.rootdir, under which all ripping operations take place.
cfg.rip: Selected ripper.
cfg.enc: Comma-separated list of selected encoders.
cfg.maxenc: Number of encoding processes to spawn at once.
cfg.dirfmt: Format string for artist and album directory names.
cfg.filefmt: Format string for song filenames.
cfg.ejectcmd: Command to eject a CD. Defaults to the empty string (no ejection).
cfg.repeat: Set to 1 to start ripping next disc immediately after a disc finishes, without pressing Return. Note: make sure you have specified a valid ejectcmd above!
cfg.keep_encoder_running: Set to 1 to prevent the encoder engine from exiting when the encoding queue is empty
rips.XXX.cmd, encs.XXX.cmd: Command path for ripper or encoder XXX.
rips.XXX.flags, encs.XXX.flags: Command flags for ripper or encoder XXX.
rips.XXX.dir, encs.XXX.dir: Directory, within cfg.ripdir or cfg.encdir, under which all opera- tions for ripper or encoder XXX take place.
rips.XXX.ext, encs.XXX.ext: Filename extension for ripper or encoder XXX.

CONFIG FILES

By default, Cretin reads /etc/cretinrc and ~/.cretinrc as config files at startup. Other config files may be specified by the -f option.

Config files must adhere to the following syntax:

Lines consisting only of whitespace and lines beginning with # are ignored.
All other lines begin with the name of the config variable.
If the variable is being set to a non-empty value, the variable name is followed by one or more tab characters, followed by the value. Quoting or backslashing is unnecessary.

If the variable is being set to an empty value, the line may end after the variable name.

FORMAT STRINGS

Naming of directories and files may be controlled by customizing Cretin's format strings, config variables ``cfg.dirfmt'' and ``cfg.filefmt''. Format strings are string containing tokens which obey the following grammar:

All tokens begin with a % character.
The next character in the token is one of the following letters:

a, A

Artist name.

l, L

Album name.

t, T

Track name.

n, N

Track number.

The case of the letter is significant; a lowercase letter will force items into lowercase, while an uppercase letter will leave capitalization untouched.

Optionally, the character _ may be specified next. This will replace space characters with underscores.
Optionally, a length of the form [nn] may be specified last. In the case of letters A, L and T, the length will be enforced as a maximum; in the case of N, the length will be enforced as a minimum.

Cretin's default cfg.dirfmt is ``%A[64]/%L[64]'', and cfg.filefmt defaults to ``%n[2] %T[64]''.

TIPS AND TRICKS

Distributed Ripping and Encoding

Using the networked filesystem of your choice (NFS, AFP, SMB, etc.), share a directory among all desired computers. Set cfg.rootdir on each computer to point to the directory (or a subdirectory). Ensure that all directory-related variables among machines are set in unison. You may now rip and encode on multiple computers.