Documentation

Users Manual

mp3togo can be run as a command line program. The form of the command is:

mp3togo [options] [input file(s)]

You can specify a playlist file in the options and also add input filenames directly on the command line.

While mp3togo is running, pressing space or 'p' will pause the program, <enter> resumes. The <esc> or the 'q' key will cause mp3togo to stop processing, clean up and exit.

The file cache

mp3togo is able to cache the files it converts to a directory on the filesystem. This can dramaticly speed up the program, particularly if tracks are transcoded over and over. The files are stored in a directory and indexed by the md5sum of the original file. The amount of space used by the cache is configurable and when it has been exhausted, mp3togo will continue to monitor the file use patterns and will replace less popular tracks with the in demand ones.

There are three new command line options for the cache:
--make-cache and --cache-size are used to create a cache.
--use-cache enables the use of an existing cache.

To create a cache, specify the location with --make-cache and the size limit with --cache-size. The following options will be stored within the cache, so they must be set at cache creation time. This is to ensure the files in the cache are consistent.

• --cache-size
• --encoder
• --encoder-options
• --compression-factor
• --file-tag
• --no-normalize

If these option are not specified at cache creation time, values will be taken from your config file, if it exists, or default values will be used. If you specify any of these options later, along with --use-cache, they will be silently ignored.

mp3togo will set up the cache directory and exit successfully, assuming everything went okay. mp3togo will complain about any existing cache and refuse to overwrite it. To delete a cache, simply use rm * on its contents and remove the directory.

To use a created cache, give mp3togo the --use-cache option with the same path that was given to create the cache.

Summary of options

  -c ~/.mp3togo,   --config ~/.mp3togo
     The location of the config file. (If it exists.)

  -s,    --save-config
     Write out a new config file with the options given and
     exit. To save the configuration to a different file, set
     --config to the desired filename.

  -v 1,   --verbose 1
     Set the verbosity level. A value of 0 will produce no
     output (except option parsing errors).

  -t -PORTABLE-,   --file-tag -PORTABLE-
     A string appended to the name of the file to indicate it
     has been recoded.

  -w /tmp,   --work-dir /tmp
     The path to store temporary files. This could need
     several hundred megabytes free.

  -d 1,   --tree-depth 1
     The number of directory levels to preserve in the output
     tree. Use 0 to put all output files directly into the
     target directory. Use 2 to create a directory for the
     Artist and the Album (Assuming your music collection is
     organized in directories by artist then album.

  -m 0,   --max-size 0
     The disk space available to use in bytes. Append 'M' for
     megabytes, 'G' for gigabytes or 'K' for kilobytes. Use 0
     to use all available space on the filesystem.

     Bytes, set by maxunits.

  -F,    --force
     Overwrite files if they already exist.

  -C lame,   --encoder lame
     The encoder to use to create the output files. Options
     are wave, lame or oggenc.

  -E ,   --encoder-options 
     Compression options for the encoder.

  -z 10.0,   --compression-factor 10.0
     If you change the lame options, you must change this
     factor to match the compression rate of the new options.
     This is used to estimate completed file size.

  -h,    --help
     Print this message.

  -p ,   --playlist 
     The playlist to convert. Playlists can be simple lists
     of file paths, one per line, or .m3u files or the native
     XMMS playlist file format.

  -x,    --import-xmms
     Get playlist from running instance of XMMS. (You must
     have xmms-shell installed)

  -o .,   --output-dir .
     Where to write the output files.

  --index
     Create an index file when in wav output mode.

  --no-normalize
     Don't normalize the wav file before encoding.

Examples

Load the files in playlist.m3u to the player mounted on /mnt/usb:

mp3togo -p playlist.m3u -o /mnt/usb

Load a single file to the player:

mp3togo -o /mnt/usb /home/media/Music/Nina_Simone/The_Blues/Turn_Me_On.ogg

Load the playlist from the running XMMS to /mnt/usb in ogg vorbis format:

mp3togo -C oggenc -x -o /mnt/usb

Create wav files in ~/audio-cd to burn a CD from playlist.m3u:

mp3togo -C wave -p playlist.m3u -m 700M -o ~/audio-cd

Create mp3 files on a mounted ISO CD image at /mnt/loop to burn a mp3 CD:

mp3togo -p playlist.m3u -o /mnt/loop