ripping FAQ

[Phil Meyer]

Thufir wrote:
> Running FC5, just ran "yum clean all" and "yum update", grip, sound juicer
> and lame are installed.  However, I'm having trouble ripping a CD.
>
> The CD automounts, apparently, fine.  Well enough that soundjuicer, when
> run, prompts as to which tracks to extract and where.  However, grip, when
> asked to either rip or encode, reports that "no tracks have been selected.
>  Rip whole CD?", clicking "yes" merely brings up the same dialog.
>
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$ cat /etc/fstab
> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 /                       reiserfs defaults        1 1
> LABEL=/boot             /boot                   ext3    defaults        1 2
> devpts                  /dev/pts                devpts  gid=5,mode=620  0 0
> tmpfs                   /dev/shm                tmpfs   defaults        0 0
> proc                    /proc                   proc    defaults        0 0
> sysfs                   /sys                    sysfs   defaults        0 0
> /dev/hdb3               swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 swap                    swap    defaults        0 0
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$ date
> Wed Sep 20 18:46:17 IST 2006
> [thufir at arrakis ~]$
>
>
> Again, the CD is visible, and I could, if I so chose, copy the .iso to the
> hard disc.  However, I can't browse the disc with the file browser (in
> gnome).
>
> For lame, under config, encoder, encode, lame, the settings are:
>
> encoder executable        /usr/bin/lame
> encoder command line      -h -b %b %w %m
> encoder file extension    mp3
> encoder file format       ~/mp3/%A/%d/%n.mp3
>
>
> for sound juicer:
>
> profile name              mp3
>
> profile description       <mp3>
>
> gstream pipeliner         audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame
> name=enc ! id3mux
>
> file extension            mp3
>
>
>
> When I extract an mp3 with soundjuicer I get an mp3, after a few minutes
> of pegged CPU utilization, which XMMS loads but doesn't play.  XMMS plays
> other mp3 files fine (which I've put on my mp3 player, too).
>
>
> I'm more oriented towards sound juicer, as it's at least creating files,
> but I imagine that if grip were to read the CD that grip would work fine,
> too.
>
> So, any thoughts?
>
>
>
> thanks,
>
> Thufir
>
>   
First, make sure you have the 'good stuff' from the livna repositories:

sudo rpm -ivh http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-5.rpm

sudo yum install gstreamer\*

run soundjuicer and edit preferences
from the preferences, edit profiles
add a profile called mp3
under gstreamer pipeline:
audio/x-raw-int,rate=44100,channels=2 ! lame name=extreme
Look at the lame man page for mp3 lossy levels -- I prefer the extreme 
setting, but I am a bit fussy about this.
The extreme setting creates mp3 files about 1MB per minute, which is 
larger than most folks want, but it seems to be the minimum for my ears 
on most content.
Be sure to click the Active check box.

Now you can create mp3 files directly from SoundJuicer.

HOWEVER

There are currently bugs in the 2.6.17 Fedora kernels that may prohibit 
some types of digital reads from removable media devices.  Check your 
/var/log/messages for lots of read errors during ripping.  If they are 
present, it SHOULD mean that your drive is having hardware problems.  
But currently it simply means that you have triggered the bug OR you 
have hardware problems with the drive. :(

Currently on 5 systems I have tested, 4 have difficulties ripping 
anything except plain iso files.
The last two rips that I did with SoundJuicer failed to do tags. :(  It 
worked perfectly up til then.

Some new music CDs have 'copywrite protection' mechanisims that can 
prevent ripping.  These include but are not limited to:
    multisession music CDs (computers don't like multisession music CDs, 
but plain CD players don't know how to do multisession CDs so they 
ignore it.
    Tricky multisession CDs where the session your computer will see has 
very lossy versions of all the tracks.
    Other misaligned data tricks to cause computers to 'skip' data that 
plain old CD players will just ignore.  Some of these tricks will cause 
a computer to reread the previous block in a never ending loop while 
again, old plain CD players just ignore it.

Good luck!