Whipper

Whipper is a Python 2.7 CD-DA ripper based on the morituri project (CDDA ripper for *nix systems aiming for accuracy over speed). It enhances morituri which development seems to have halted merging old ignored pull requests, improving it with bugfixes and new features.

Whipper is currently developed and tested only on Linux distributions but may work fine on other *nix OSes too.

In order to track whipper's latest changes it's advised to check its commit history (README and CHANGELOG files may not be comprehensive).

Table of content

• Rationale
• Features
• Changelog
• Installation
  1. Required dependencies
  2. Fetching the source code
  3. Building the bundled dependencies
  4. Finalizing the installation
• Usage
• Getting started
• Configuration file documentation
• Running uninstalled
• Logger plugins
• License
• Contributing
  • Bug reports & feature requests
• Credits
• Links

Rationale

For a detailed description, see morituri's wiki page: The Art of the Rip.

Features

• Detects correct read offset (in samples)
• Detects whether ripped media is a CD-R
• Has ability to defeat cache of drives
• Performs Test & Copy rips
• Verifies rip accuracy using the AccurateRip database
• Uses MusicBrainz for metadata lookup
• Supports reading the pre-emphasis flag embedded into some CDs (and correctly tags the resulting rip). Currently whipper only reports the pre-emphasis flag value stored in the TOC.
• Detects and rips non digitally silent Hidden Track One Audio (HTOA)
• Provides batch ripping capabilities
• Provides templates for file and directory naming
• Supports lossless encoding of ripped audio tracks (FLAC)
• Allows extensibility through external logger plugins

Changelog

See CHANGELOG.md.

For detailed information, please check the commit history.

Installation

Whipper still isn't widely available as an official package in many Linux distributions so, in order to use it, it may be necessary to build it from its source code. If you are building from a source tarball or checkout, you can choose to use whipper installed or uninstalled but first install all the required dependencies.

This is a noncomprehensive summary which shows whipper's packaging status (unofficial repositories are probably not included):

In case you decide to install whipper using an unofficial repository just keep in mind it is your responsibility to verify that the provided content is safe to use.

Required dependencies

Whipper relies on the following packages in order to run correctly and provide all the supported features:

• cd-paranoia, for the actual ripping
  • To avoid bugs it's advised to use cd-paranoia 10.2+0.94+2-2
• cdrdao, for session, TOC, pre-gap, and ISRC extraction
• GObject Introspection, to provide GLib-2.0 methods used by task.py
• PyGObject, required by task.py
• python-musicbrainzngs, for metadata lookup
• python-mutagen, for tagging support
• python-setuptools, for installation, plugins support
• python-cddb, for showing (but not using) metadata if disc information aren't available in the MusicBrainz DB
• python-requests, for retrieving AccurateRip database entries
• pycdio, for drive identification (required for drive offset and caching behavior to be stored in the configuration file).
  • To avoid bugs it's advised to use pycdio 0.20 or 0.21 with libcdio ≥ 0.90 ≤ 0.94. If using libcdio 0.83, which is too old to satisfy all the requirements of whipper, just stick to pycdio 0.17. Altough it needs additional testing, libcdio 2.0.0 seems to work fine if used with pycdio 2.0.0. All other combinations aren't guaranteed to work.
• libsndfile, for reading wav files
• flac, for reading flac files
• sox, for track peak detection

Fetching the source code

Change to a directory where you want to put whipper source code (for example, $HOME/dev/ext or $HOME/prefix/src)

git clone https://github.com/JoeLametta/whipper.git
cd whipper

Building the bundled dependencies

Whipper uses and packages a slightly different version of the accuraterip-checksum tool:

You can edit the install path in config.mk

cd src
make
sudo make install
cd ..

Finalizing the installation

Install whipper: python2 setup.py install

Note that, depending on the chosen installation path, this command may require elevated rights.

Usage

Whipper currently only has a command-line interface called whipper which is self-documenting: whipper -h gives you the basic instructions.

Whipper implements a tree of commands: for example, the top-level whipper command has a number of sub-commands.

Positioning of arguments is important:

whipper cd -d (device) rip

is correct, while

whipper cd rip -d (device)

is not, because the -d argument applies to the cd command.

Getting started

The simplest way to get started making accurate rips is:

1. Pick a relatively popular CD that has a good chance of being in the AccurateRip database

2. Analyze the drive's caching behavior

   whipper drive analyze

3. Find the drive's offset.

   Consult the AccurateRip's CD Drive Offset database for your drive. Drive information can be retrieved with whipper drive list.

   whipper offset find -o insert-numeric-value-here

   If you omit the -o argument, whipper will try a long, popularity-sorted list of drive offsets.

   If you can not confirm your drive offset value but wish to set a default regardless, set read_offset = insert-numeric-value-here in whipper.conf.

   Offsets confirmed with whipper offset find are automatically written to the configuration file.

   If specifying the offset manually, please note that: if positive it must be written as a number without sign (ex: +102 -> 102), if negative it must include the sign too (ex: -102 -> -102).

4. Rip the disc by running

   whipper cd rip

Configuration file documentation

The configuration file is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/whipper/whipper.conf, or $HOME/.config/whipper/whipper.conf if $XDG_CONFIG_HOME is undefined.

See XDG Base Directory Specification and ConfigParser.

The configuration file consists of newline-delineated [sections] containing key = value pairs. The sections [main] and [musicbrainz] are special config sections for options not accessible from the command line interface. Sections beginning with drive are written by whipper; certain values should not be edited.

Example configuration demonstrating all [main] and [musicbrainz] options:

[main]
path_filter_fat = True		; replace FAT file system unsafe characters in filenames with _
path_filter_special = False	; replace special characters in filenames with _

[musicbrainz]
server = musicbrainz.org:80	; use MusicBrainz server at host[:port]

[drive:HL-20]
defeats_cache = True		; whether the drive is capable of defeating the audio cache
read_offset = 6			; drive read offset in positive/negative frames (no leading +)
# do not edit the values 'vendor', 'model', and 'release'; they are used by whipper to match the drive

# command line defaults for `whipper cd rip`
[whipper.cd.rip]
unknown = True
output_directory = ~/My Music
track_template = new/%%A/%%y - %%d/%%t - %%n	; note: the format char '%' must be represented '%%'
disc_template = %(track_template)s
# ...

Running uninstalled

To make it easier for developers, you can run whipper straight from the source checkout:

python2 -m whipper -h

Logger plugins

Whipper supports using external logger plugins to write rip .log files.

List available plugins with whipper cd rip -h. Specify a logger to rip with by passing -L loggername:

whipper cd rip -L what

Official logger plugins

Unfortunately both logger plugins are currently outdated and won't work with latest whipper versions.

• morituri-eaclogger - eac-like logger attempting to maintain strict compatiility with EAC
• morituri-whatlogger - eac-like logger containing the informational enhancements of the yamllogger, originally designed for use on What.CD

License

Licensed under the GNU GPLv3 license.

Copyright (C) 2009 Thomas Vander Stichele
Copyright (C) 2016-2018 the whipper team: JoeLametta, Frederik Olesen,
			Samantha Baldwin, Merlijn Wajer, et al.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301  USA

Contributing

Make sure you have the latest copy from our git repository. Where possible, please include tests for new or changed functionality. You can run tests with python -m unittest discover from your source checkout.

Bug reports & feature requests

Please use the issue tracker to report any bugs or to file feature requests.

When filing bug reports, please run the failing command with the environment variable WHIPPER_DEBUG set. For example:

WHIPPER_DEBUG=DEBUG WHIPPER_LOGFILE=whipper.log whipper offset find
gzip whipper.log

And attach the gzipped log file to your bug report.

Without WHIPPER_LOGFILE set, logging messages will go to stderr. WHIPPER_DEBUG accepts a string of the default python logging levels.

Credits

Thanks to:

• Thomas Vander Stichele
• Joe Lametta
• Merlijn Wajer
• Samantha Baldwin

And to all the .

Links

You can find us and talk about the project on IRC: freenode, #whipper channel.

• Redacted thread (official)
• Repology: versions for whipper
• Unattended ripping using whipper (by Thomas McWork)