[Abcde-users] how to better cope with broken tracks?

[Alan W. Kerr]

On 11/01/2015 01:18 PM, Tom Roche wrote:

> So my current questions are:
>
> 1. How can I correctly drive the ripper for usecase={one track fails, rest are good}?

This can be done. See my answer below.

> 2. Is there currently A Better Way to tell `abcde` to punt on a failing track, but continue to attempt to rip the rest on the CD?

I *think* there is a way to do this...  but if I remember correctly, it 
requires you to setup the switches/options for the program that does the 
actual reading/ripping of the CD.

> 3. If (there is) not (currently A Better Way to tell `abcde` ...), should this be a feature request, or is this functionality out-of-scope for `abcde`?

It would be useful to have a simple method to say "ripping taking too 
long: skip to next track".

> TIA, Tom Roche <Tom_Roche at pobox.com>
>

Tom, if you type "abcde -h", the usage info has, near the top:
echo "Usage: abcde [options] [tracks]"

and near the bottom:
echo "Tracks is a space-delimited list of tracks to grab."
echo "Ranges specified with hyphens are allowed (i.e., 1-5)."

It's just that the default for [tracks] is "all tracks" so it is rarely 
used since 99.999% of the time, that's what is wanted.

So for your case, where, on an 11 track CD, track 10 is bad, you can use:
abcde [your options] 1-9 11

and it will do what you want.  A better method might be to do:
abcde [your options] 1-9
abcde [your options] 11

this will rip 1-9 (since you KNOW those can be ripped)
and then TRY to rip 11...  you know it's hanging on track 10 but it 
won't go on, so you are not sure if track 11 is bad also.

then, if you can find some way of fixing/cleaning up the CD, you can use:
abcde [your options] 10
until it rips, or you give up.

So for a longer example, let's say you have a CD with 20 tracks and 
tracks 6, 12, and 13 are bad (but you don't know that yet).

abcde [your options]
...gets to track 6 and hangs, so

abcde [your options] 1-5
... rips 1-5, now try the rest:
abcde [your options] 7-20
... hangs on track 12. arg! next:

abcde [your options] 7-11
... rips 7-11, now try the rest:
abcde [your options] 13-20
... immediately hangs on 13. double arg! next:

abcde [your options] 14-20
... rips 14-20

so you have tracks 1-5, 7-11, and 14-20 ripped with tracks 6,12,13 
unripped.  yeah, it's an annoyingly long procedure but you CAN get all 
the good tracks ripped.

Hope that helps...

Alan W. Kerr          awkerr at aoc.nrao.edu          Whee!(tm)