How To Get List Of Files From Audio CD Bash Terminal

Question

I've been using VLC with command line batch files for years to rip audio cds.

I just tried writing a similar bash script in Ubuntu 14.04 and was surprised--I can't figure out how to get a list of file names on the CD to pass to VLC Media Player to convert. I need something like:

FILES=/path/to/*.cda
for f in $FILES
do
   echo "Processing $f file..."
   # take action on each file. $f store current file name
   call_my_vlc_function( $f)
done

Is there a 'trick' to getting a list of files on an audio cd in Ubuntu for use in a bash script or is this just not possible? I've already read a number of articles on how the gvfs system is different from a 'real' file system, but I'm just amazed that there is something Windows can do so trivially which can't be done in bash.

TIA,

---JC

Answer 1

I guess I would second using ripit. However, it is just a wrapper around some other CD utilities, such as cdparanoia and cdda2wav. It seems to me that it would just be easier to rip the entire CD into the file format you need (OGG, WAV, MP3...).

However, if you must use VLC, then I suspect all you really need is the track information, and cdda2wav can do that, but other than the number of tracks, I'm confused as to what you are looking for specifically. Anyhow, if you want to do that to get the number of tracks, you could then pass in the parameter to VLC such as:

vlc cdda//sr0 --cdda-track 1

More about ripit, check out the README just off of http://www.suwald.com/ripit/use.php

If you go low-level with cdda2wav or its companions, you may have difficulty with the version that coms with Ubuntu, so you might want to read up on it and download the other version from http://cdrecord.org.

If none of this helps, then all I can say is that more input is needed.

Answer 2

You're probably getting names like "Audio File 1" "Audio File 2" etc in Windows. These aren't real files, they're made up by Windows. Either use a GUI file browser with this support like Nautilus, or else use ripit, crip, yaret or some other script to rip.