What ordinary users want is simple program which rips the songs fast and easy with no extra hassle. That's why net is full of songs which have been ripped with Musicmatch or similiar All-In-One MP3-encoding program. Oggdrop is bit on this direction, but it is not enough. There are many commandline programs for creating Ogg Vorbis files: cdparanoia for ripping, oggenc for encoding, vorbisgain for loudness control, vorbiscomment for tagging and all are used with various frontends. All these programs could be combined to one .exe file with nice frontend and it could be called Oggfier.

These are the features what i'm looking for:

-Fast and simple process: 1. Start Oggfier 2. Put cd in drive 3. Name tracks which you rip 4. Rip & encode on fly 5. Write tags. 6. All ready!

-Automatic loudness control. If person rips separate tracks, apply Radio setting. If whole album, apply Audiophile setting.

-Only basic Quality levels: Low 64 Kbs, Lower 96 kbs, Standard 128kbs, Higher 160 kbs, High 192kbs

-Simple, visual and easy to use frontend with big buttons, few options and clear help text. Maybe something like Mp3Gain has.

-Ordinary users look for speed, so encoding needs to be faster than MP3 encoding. I don't know how fast vorbis encodes compared to mp3, but optimizations are welcome.

-At the same time as Oggfier is installed on computer, also Winamp-plugin and/or Vorbis Directsound filter could be installed.

There could be also separate Winamp 2/3 plugin based on this program. You could rip, encode and play music straight from Winamp; songs would be automatically added to playlist after encoding, there could be somekind of music database of all encoded songs, downloaded ogg's would be automatically added to database when they are played, etc.

What is needed, is a coder(s) who can combine these all to one program(John33?) and frontend designer(s) who can create proper GUI (Jenny?, Speek?, Others?). And of course HA community to test program so that bugs can be removed, GUI made better and of course spread and market Oggfier for people to use.


When your friends, co-workers, family, etc. ask for a program which would be good for transferring their cd's to computer, you can direct them to Oggfier. Then, if they ask for hardware ogg-players, tell them of IRiver players and tell them how good they are. If they ask where they can download and share Ogg files, install WinMX 3.3, set it to Ogg and show how to use it.

Speek already made an ogg frontend called oggifier.
But no ripping.


I think the reason for this not happening is that a secure ripper is not something everyone can just do. The "perfect" ripper is already there. It's EAC.

secondly: what do you wan't that EAC can't do? It can start encoding after the whole cd is ripped or after each track.
Try to list the things EAC doesn't do for you then it would be easier to come up with a solution I think.

it's not asking what it doesn't, it's asking for a program every newbie, who even hasn't heard about ripping and encoding, can use!

Kim_C:

What you want can be "sort of" achieved by using EAC in combination with WinVorbis.

Rip the tracks to Wave files, using a filename scheme like "Artist -- Album -- Year -- Track No. -- Title". Then use WinVorbis to encode the WAV's to Ogg. If you set it up properly, it will do all this in one go:

- Encode the Oggies.
- Read the information to be put in the tags from the filename.
- Rename the Oggies to a "normal" filename scheme, like "Artist - Title".
- Apply ReplayGain to the freshly encoded Oggies.
- Delete the source WAV files.

That's basically as easy as it can get IMHO, and it works like a charme. The only difficult thing for newbies is to set the programs up... but newbie-friendly guides can take care of that.

I know I actually missed your point, that's not what you're asking for... but unfortunately there is no such tool. We can only try to make it as easy as possible with the software available currently.

CU

Dominic

Damn. No wonder where that name came to my head, i downloaded while ago few frontends from his page. Sorry Speek!

How about.... Ogger.

(BTW i mentioned cdparanoia because it's from Xiph themselves and it is said to be good ripper. If EAC source is available, it could be used in ripping part of the program as well. CDEX might be good too.)



Right!



It's easy for basic users like we who how know how to use these programs. But it's not easy enough for newbie/non-geek/"person who just wants to encode his cd's to computer" when it could and should be much easier and faster, instead of messing around with separate ripper and encoder programs and with their multiple options and features. Besides, when i'm feeling lazy, this kind of tool would make ripping ogg's much more easier! Just Rip'm and Go!



That's why i'm saying that somebody should make this tool what i'm proposing! Parts are already available, all what is needed is that somebody combines them to one file with nice GUI.

FYI: Source code for EAC is not avaliable and the author said it is unlikely that it will be (not common programming lang., messy code).
Source code for CDex is avaliable.

Maybe a modified Cdex would do?
Remove all ripping settings and use settings that will work with most drives.
Remove all encoding settings and just have the few quality settings you suggested.

Sounds good and looking at pictures of CDex looks good too. Bit of simpyfing of gui and features (mainly stripping off stuff which isn't needed), adding Vorbisgain, full Vorbis tagging + some automatising (like autodetecting of cd-rom settings when program is first started after installing, installing aspi-drivers if needed, etc.) and it's all what is needed!

Any coders reading who would be interested making OggCDexLite?

I don't know what that would really do.. Vorbis is already pretty easy to rip, and mp3 still dominates because it's basically a house-hold name. What we really need to improve the popularity of Vorbis is for some uber-Vorbis geeks, with mad phat bandwidth, to create a music pirating group that distributes Vorbis on all the major channels (KaZaA, WinMX, Gnutella, IRC, Usenet).. Then, people will download, listen, learn, and take notice of Vorbis.

Automatic "loudness" control is already available using VorbisGain using the -a, or --album switch which automatically will tag an album directory of ogg's with the proper album gain settings, and radio gain settings.

Encoding is what I would call "fast" on my system at 1.9x to 2.0x using OggEnc.exe, which is currently twice as fast as using Lame --alt-preset standard.

Automatic installation of plugins in my view is a bad ideal, especially when all one would need are links to download PP's in_vorbis.dll plugin which is by the way can be installed by Winamp Full v2.81.

Actually for the majority of what you want could be easily accomplished with links to forums like HA, and websites with very detailed explicit info on exactly how to do this and that. A simple easy to read readme.txt document with installation instructions for every program, and plugin needed would be the way I would go.

As for a databasing program there are many available free and shareware.

Except for ReplayGain Support tkcOggRipper by theKompany meats your requirements exactly.
Download: ftp://ftp.rygannon.com/pub/OggVorbis/

It uses cdparanoia for extraction, so results should be bit identical to CDex. I've looked at it only once, but it seemed to have a very clear and easy to use interface.

Consisting of three executables, replacing their oggenc with John33's compile could give a major speed improvment. I'll have a look at this tonight.

dev0

Okay, I just played around with it a bit and was quite disappointed with the results! maybe the Linuxverson is better, but the WindowsNT Version has the following problems:

- It doesn't use cdparanoia! It uses the unix-tool CDDA2RAW from cdrtools, which is the worst/simplest ripper ever. I tried it with a not-scratched CD and it produced clicks and pops all over the ogg.

- The oggenc compile shipped with it is far away fom perfect: It encodes at 3.8179x compared to 4.2878x (John33's compile) -> bit identical results! Replacing oggenc is possible and speeds up encoding.

- It doesn't rip and encode on-the-fly, but in a two step process.

- The interface looks nice, but is very unclear. It took me a while to figure out how to rip the CD (You HAVE to do a FreeDB Query first)

Overall this is far away from a One-Click-Ripping solution for Vorbis and will make it look worse than it is. (/me imagines the first "ogg produces clipping" comments at HA)

dev0

Yes, i think too that this is key to success. But when Vorbis starts to take notice on ordinary non-techminded computer users, there will be a need for this kind of tool for those people who would be interested using ogg but want to do them fast and easy like they have done mp3's with Musicmatch. Most likely at that point it will be some commercial program like Musicmatch, but why wait so long when it can be done now and made free for all to use.

Bylies comment from Open Source MPC-thread:
"A lot of the mp3 people today are still using the easiest compressor along with the easiest and fanciest grabbing software and in their eyes the quality is sufficient"

This is the group of people who this program would be for. These people use Musicmatch for their mp3-encoding and they don't care or even know for better. When you search for mp3's on Kazaa, you mostly get 128kbs files and most (if not all) are encoded by these Musicmatch people.

It is true that mp3 is household name and they probably don't move out from it very easily, but i still think that this kind of tool would be useful for gaining more success for Vorbis. In the end they don't care is it mp3 or ogg, all they want is they can move their cd's to computer and listen them. When there comes more hardware support for Ogg, there will be even more need for this kind of program.

Dev0: Thanks for checking that. Too bad it isn't good enough.

As i wrote this, i download a song "Regents park" by Neotropic from Soulseek. It is encoded as 128kbs STEREO with CD'n'Go! Suite 99 1.10 Build 1. This song has been hard to find and even harder as a good quality mp3. Those who don't get it, see now what i'm trying to say?

CDex seems the right tool. It uses both cdparanoia and vorbis. Maybe the only thing needed is a "pre-configured" CDex. By default, CDex should use "Paranoia, Full" ripping method, the "mp3" button could say "ogg" (or "go"?) The third "partial" button shouldn't be there (its ok in the menus tho). Not sure about the mp3 to wav, wav to mp3, maybe only replace this "mp3" thing.

The encoder should, of course, be defaulted to "Ogg Vorbis", and use the default quality (3). Of course there is always the slider and rest of Vorbis settings for those wanting to change this.


This can be done by both forking a little modified CDex, or, simply if mr. CDex author takes this into account. I mean, what will CDex gain/lose if it defaults to Ogg Vorbis, and the ripping method to "Paranoia, Full"? Mp3 could remain there, and all the rest of CDex options, just defaulted for quality from the beginning. Who knows, maybe default Ogg Vorbis quality to 6 or 7, maybe thats best for the masses


EAC is one hell of configuration nightmare, and its so easy to screw things up. cdparanoia often does the job better anyway. Definetively not for newbies, and is not even open source

OK, I've modified Cdex 1.5 beta 8 to default to full CDparanoia and to OggVorbis -q 5. Does anyone want this posted anywhere?

Where did you get CDex 1.5 Beta 8??

Great job, John33! I'd like to experiment with it, if you post it somewhere.

What do you think about integrating automatic Replaygain like i suggested on my first message? Are you also open for other feature suggestions?


Even that Vorbis is very impressive, i think level 3 (112kbs) is bit too low. 128kbs is more or less "standard" nowdays and Vorbis quality at that bitrate is very good so no need to go lower that that. Going higher is another matter... Personally, i use level 4.5. It's nominal bitrate is 144kbs but generally oggs are around 128kbs. On ordinary listening it's "transparent" for me.

BTW I love your avatar. It's so kawaii! And thanks for your support.

I'm open to any suggestions, but whether they can be practically implemented is another matter altogether!

You can download CDex 1.5beta8, the amended version, from Mirror 1, below. It contains the basic dlls only.

<CDex admin mode on>
CDex would lose lots and lots of users.

Let's face it, people - almost everybody outside HA's walls wants MP3 at 128kbps.
If we made it output vorbis as default, people would say "ewww, where are my MP3s? CDex sucks"

Even if we made it output --aps as default, people would say "ewww, the MP3s are too big, let's go back to AudioCatalyst, it creates smaller files"

Don't forget - Lame's default mode is 128, not APS. And LAME is much more targeted to the "geek" user, that feels comfortable with command lines and stuff. What can we say about the usual Joe Blow that uses CDex?

So - no, Vorbis as default CDex output sounds extremely unlikely at the time being.
<CDex admin mode off>

Regards;

Roberto.

Edit: mr. CDex author = Albert Faber

What about --alt-preset (cbr) 128 as default in CDex (with Full Paranoia of course)? It should be way better than the current no -nspsytune no -h setting...
dev0

Switch the admin mode back on, please, and consider this :

<rant>

CDex's default config for LAME 128kbps is simple stereo, using GPSYCHO. CDex's default config for LAME --alt-preset ABR/VBR has a maximum bitrate limited to 224kbps. q 0 is marked as "very high quality", although we know it isn't. And the whole LAME DLL config dialog is so damn confusing.

All that configurability should be removed, and only the following options should be made available:

- CBR (mapped to alt-presets) with only the bitrate selectable, nothing else
- ABR, same thing here
- VBR: aps, ape, and the fast variants. (And the new medium and radio presets when they're ready.) No more.

Similar to this.

If you consider Joe Average the user CDex is mainly aimed at, you should at least optimize the default settings, since Joe Average will never bother to change them anyway. And perhaps even hide the options "experts" will potentially misuse.

I'm not for forcing CDex users into Vorbis, for the very reason you mentioned. But you could force users into "sort-of" correct usage of LAME without losing them. The speed decrease from GPSYCHO CBR to --alt-preset CBR may make some users wonder, but only the complete idiots will quit using CDex because of that.

When Dibrom's medium preset is finished, that will be the ideal default setting for a "mainstream ripper" like CDex IMHO.

</rant>

Sorry, I had to let that out, once again. Please don't take it personally.

*yawn*

Dominic

Excellent! (wow such a quick response! ) Please continue providing this, its time we move forward, enough rippers do low quality mp3 already.

I encourage you people to maintain this little fork if for some reason Mr Albert Faber doesn't agree with defaulting to quality settings... (oh the joys of Open source ).

Lets change the name to avoid further confusion

Lets see.. CDexHQ, CDexOGG, OGGex, Vorbisex, CDvorbis, CDex Vorbis Quality Edition, CDexodus, CDextreme, CDenhanced, OGGer, OVex, TAMBUG CDex(This Ain't Mp3 But OggVorbis) MSuck (Mp3 Suck, U could know).

Since we are forking anyway, we could simplify the interface even more, maybe even using wav to ogg / ogg to wav buttons.

So what do you think?

PD: I love usagichan

Tsk!

Such a tragic missed opportunity.

The ogg front end should, of course, have been called frOGGer

Okay, i finally managed to test John33's special CDex compile. When i first started CDex it gave me error that ASPI layer couldn't be found or initialized. After that message CDex crashed. I have Windows 2000 SP3, Toshiba DVD-ROM SD-M1212 and latest Adaptec 4.7 ASPI. I had to remove Adaptec aspi with FORCEASPI and install older 4.60 with it to make ASPI work. CDex didn't work with Native NT SCSI interface at all, it didn't see my cd-rom and i couldn't turn it off from menu. I had to edit Cdex.ini file to turn it off.

Ripping & encoding ítself went nicely. It was a bit slow, though. Encoding just wavs to ogg is much faster on my machine (XP 1700+). However, cdparanoid got stuck on one cd and after an hour trying to read one song, i gave up.. Skip song-feature would have been very nice on that case and maybe implementig somekind of automatic Deglich for erroneus part. Something has to with this, normal person is not going to wait more than 5 minutes.

Getting album and song information from CDDB worked great too. Tagging of ogg's works ok, i was worried about "File Tag options" setting where were only "ID3Tag Version"-option was available and standard setting was ID3-V2.

I tested these bitrates on two albums, both House-type dance music. Using "standard" setting 5 (=160kbs) overrall bitrate was around 145 kbs. With 4.5 (=144kbs) was around 128kbs. Compared to these bitrates, offical standard Vorbis quality level 3 (=112kbs) looks really low. Level 3 was actually around 105kbs... but sounds ok, not so bad as you would think.



Yes, if this is developed further, name needs to be changed. Also, i think that button graphics need to be better, present CDex buttons are not IMHO clear enough of what they do. I like MP3Gain Gui, it has simple interface with big buttons (and it has text on buttons of what they do ).



I like these. Also OGGextractor, CD-to-vorbis, CD-to-ogg, CDFrogger, Frogg might be good too.



I agree, of course. However, CDex isn't offically forked yet, this version is just for quick testing.

I have ideas what to strip away, what to change, what kind of quality settings there should be, etc. But everything depends on John33, is he interested developing this further? If he has no time or interest, we need somebody else to continue development. Also, i'd like to have CDex developer's permission to use CDex as basis for this program.


Great name but unfortunately there is already Amiga mpeg video player named Frogger. http://frogger.rules.pl

mijj:


Kim_C:



Ok, then. How ... about ........
... erm ...

frOGGy !

what a goldmine of opportunities for punny "OGG" related stuff ...

fOGGy
dOGGy, dOGGy bag, dOGGy doo, dOGGo, etc ...
pettifOGGer
snOGGing
sOGGy
bOGGle, mind-bOGGling
nOGGin
boondOGGle
clOGGed
flOGGed
gOGGle box
grOGGy

... all we need now is a prodcut for each name ! Let's see you compete with that, mp3.

hahahaha
ahahahahahahahaha

ha

"Front-end for OGG Users"

aka "fOGG u!"

(hehe, couldn't resist =D)

And one more thing I don't want to see is a frontend for ape to ogg conversion: "FlOgg the Monkey"