Re: Integrated CD ripping/playing (instead of goobox/sound juicer)

[Ikke <eikke eikke com>]

First of all: I love the idea.

> I have a patch for Sound Juicer which does exactly this.  It registers
> an audiocd:/// method which shows you the contents of the CD in the
> drive and looks up the titles in MusicBrainz.  Dragging and dropping the
> files from audiocd:/// to a normal location results in the files being
> ripped and encoded.  Just what you want, right?
That's +- it yes (I talked to Karel before he posted this).

> Problems:
> 1) No obvious way to configure what encoder is used
Can't GStreamer do this in some way?

Regarding what format to encode to, and quality settings: if there'd be
a "Gnome-global" soundripper (like SJ or whatever), this one has to
store the "default user preferences" too somewhere, isn't it?
There could be some dialog when the user drags files, asking what
profile to use (High Quality MP3, High Quality OGG, Low Quality
MP3,...), and a button to set "advanced" settings. Next to this there
should be some checbox saying "Don't ask this anymore, always use these
settings" or something (like FireFox's "Remember Password" box etc).

> 2) No easy way to select which CD drive is used (using
> audiocd:///dev/hdc is one solution)
Use HAL to figure out in what drive an audio cd is present. If there's
only one, audiocd:// points to that drive.
If there's more than one drive with an audio cd present (most unlikely,
but well), audiocd:// gives 2 (or more) "directories" in Nautilus (and
VFS?) with (e.g.) the album name as a title.

> 3) No obvious way to configure what filename format (i.e. "[track] -
> [title].ogg") is used.
As in 1, use the "gnome-global audio ripper" settings, or ask the user
in the same dialog box.

> 4) No directory structure is generated automatically.  I keep my music
> in ~/Music/[Artist]/[Album]/[Track]-[Title].ogg, and with this I have to
> manually create the intermediate folders
True. That's what a tag editor and file manager like EasyTag is for.

> I'm tempted to say that the more complete integration of SJ into
> Rhythmbox[1] as the ripping part of an Audio CD source is a good
> solution, a la iTunes.
Dragging is very nice too IMHO :) It should be possible to have both,
isn't it?
I guess big parts of SJ could be re-used (everything except to UI
stuff).


Ikke
http://www.eikke.com