Ripping music CDs - program that is good with multiple optical drives

[Cameron Simpson]

On 11Jun2008 12:36, Marland V. Pittman <marland at mvpittman.com> wrote:
>> I don't know how practical it would be to try to rip more than one CD at
>> a time - even with multiple processors but perhaps someone else has
>> tried.
>>   
> Yeah, that's kind of the whole point for me. In sequence is fine, but I  
> don't want to have to go to the gui, and specify what drive it should  
> rip from. I had really good experiences with Windows Media Player and  
> iTunes in that respect.

I have a script of my own:
  http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/css/bin/cdrip
  http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/css/manuals/cdrip.1.html
It's command line.
It rips to multiple formats as specified.
It can be pointed at an arbitrary device.
It queues encoders in the background, maximising throughput on the CD device.
It can be handed a lock name and/or job count to control its use of CPUs.

Its main downside for your use is that it pauses after consulting freedb
to give you a chance to edit the table of contents. That could be
circumvented. If you circumvent it (trusting freedb's contents, which
can be a little... dodgy), enjoy.

However, if I were doing what you describe, I'd:

  - open a bunch of screen sessions, one per device

  - run cdrip in each screen session pointing at a different device,
    sharing a command lock name

  - ideally, use a multitab terminal emulator that hints about the display
    state. For example, on a Mac I use iTerm which has the feature that a
    visited tab bar has black letters, an unvisited but updated tab bar has
    red letters, and an unvisited but _updatING_ tab bar has purple letters.
    You can see at a glance the terminals that have done things and are now
    stalled waited for your attention.

Set up your shell environment first; CDRIP honours a bunch of envvars
for defaults, with command line options for overrides. So set the
envvars and use the -d option to choose the CDROM device per run.

You'll need some of the other scripts from the same collection; there's a
tarball here:
  http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/css/

Two disclaimers: they're my scripts, and from the INSTALL file:

 Warrantee:
    None whatsoever!
    These scripts work for me, but any of them may have bugs or be
    arbitrarily dependent on my own login environment.  While I try to
    make most of them usable by others (and am happy to hear suggestions
    or bug reports), they're for my use and may well not meet your needs.
    But feel free to hack them to meet your needs.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

It is better never to have been born. But who among us has such luck?