[conspire] Linux utilities for CD data and audio

[Rick Moen]

Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 13:18:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Jan Parcel 
To: rick at linuxmafia.com
Subject: Re: Fedora Core CDs

>OK.  It's not a big deal for me to make a set of each for you, but it's
>possible that Fedora Core 5 might be out by the time you want to try
>Opteron, so I'll do i386 only, for now.

Thanks.

>Pretty much al CDR[W]s of the past decade have supported a uniform
>command set, so that part tends not to be a problem.  I'm guessing that
>your Iomega might be a USB-conected one?  That might be the origin of
>your WinME/2k/XP problem:  USB support on Win32 is a piecemeal affair,
>and any device for which there isn't a one-off driver just for that one
>make/model is screwed.

Actually, the drivers work great, it's the cd software that's broken.
However, once installed, it complains that a device has been disabled, but
if I uninstall it, same thing.  Oddly, I can reinstall from the IOMEGA device,
so I guess it's a virtual music device that's broken.

I guess I need Nero and/or a Linux equivalent.


>The situation on Linux is a lot better:  In my experience, once you have
>generic USB support for some standardised class of equipment such as
>mass storage devices, you can support any such device.   E.g., any Linux
>box configured to mount any single USB flash drive will from that point
>forward be able to mount all other USB flash drives.
>
>In this case:
>http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2001/07/msg00239.html
>http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.linux.hardware/browse_thread/thread/242d
045ba1e51d21/952cb769c2ffdc6c%23952cb769c2ffdc6c?sa=X&oi=groupsr&start=0&num=3
>
>If you supply the model number, I can be more specific.

I need software or directions to compose CD's.  I got the impression that
"dd" is insufficient, whether for cygnus or linux -- one needs blocking
factors etc. 

I'm also going to want to make cd's from tapes ripped from analog, so maybe
I should just get Nero?  (There's some Leslie Fish that I legitimately
bought but can no longer play, and which will NEVER be on sale again due
to her unique ability to get into arguments, so I need to make CD's for
myself.)





Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:42:03 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: Jan Parcel 
Subject: Re: Fedora Core CDs
X-Mas: Bah humbug.
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.6+20040907i

Quoting Jan Parcel:

> >Pretty much al CD-R[W]s of the past decade have supported a uniform
> >command set, so that part tends not to be a problem.  I'm guessing that
> >your Iomega might be a USB-conected one?  That might be the origin of
> >your WinME/2k/XP problem:  USB support on Win32 is a piecemeal affair,
> >and any device for which there isn't a one-off driver just for that one
> >make/model is screwed.
> 
> Actually, the drivers work great, it's the cd software that's broken.
> However, once installed, it complains that a device has been disabled, but
> if I uninstall it, same thing.  Oddly, I can reinstall from the IOMEGA device,
> so I guess it's a virtual music device that's broken.
> 
> I guess I need Nero and/or a Linux equivalent.

Standard software to burn CDs is the cdrecord command-line tool, with or
without your choice of X11 front-end software.  The most popular of the
latter is a KDE package called "k3b".  (Personally, I just use cdrecord.)

If you're ever curious about DVD-burning, I cover that in an article in 
my knowledgebase:  "DVD" on http://linuxmafia.com/kb/Hardware/ 

And yes, there is a binary-only Linux port of the proprietary "Nero"
program -- which I've never seen on any platform, but informed users
seem to be firmly of the opinion that the open-source k3b program is
better.

> I need software or directions to compose CD's.  I got the impression that
> "dd" is insufficient, whether for cygnus or linux -- one needs blocking
> factors etc. 

Correct.  cdrecord is your tool.  It takes care of all aspects of
communication with the CD-writing hardware.

To construct ISO9660 images from file trees, with RockRidge metadata
extensions for *ix, optionally Joliet extensions for Win32, and
whatever-they-called other extensions for MacOS, your tool is mkisofs.

Pretty much all of the various X11 front-ends for cdrecord are also
front-ends for mkisofs, such that you can do everything from one window
& menu thingie.

> I'm also going to want to make cd's from tapes ripped from analog, so maybe
> I should just get Nero?  (There's some Leslie Fish that I legitimately
> bought but can no longer play, and which will NEVER be on sale again due
> to her unique ability to get into arguments, so I need to make CD's for
> myself.)

Er, well.   The aforementioned cdrecord utility will burn to CD-R[W] any 
disk image; it neither knows nor cares about the semantics of the data.
The correct tool for creating _data_ CD images is mkisofs.  That
includes data CDs whose data are indivdual song files in your choice of
digital data format, e.g., lossly compressive formats such as mp3 and
ogg, or space-chewing non-lossy formats such as Sun .au (aka ULAW) or
Microsoft .WAV .

_Music_ CDs' metadata are not in ISO9660 format at all.  They're in
"CDDA" (CD Digital Audio) format, known as Red Book(?).  But you're not
starting with music CDs, you say, but rather "tapes".  I guess what
you'd do next depends on the sound-encoding and file (if any) metadata 
characteristics of those tapes, which you didn't detail.

I'm not really very familiar with the utility used to "rip" audio tracks
and construct digital sound files such as ogg and mp3.  (mp3 format,
unfortunately, is patent-encumbered, while ogg is not.)  A _lot_ of
people seem to like cdparanoia and LAME.

http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/
http://lame.sourceforge.net/

There are of course diverse graphical front-ends for those.

-- 
Cheers,               Chip Salzenberg: "Usenet is not a right."
Rick Moen            Edward Vielmetti: "Usenet is a right, a left, a jab,
rick at linuxmafia.com                     and a sharp uppercut to the jaw.
                                        The postman hits!  You have new mail."