1 Features over the older CD-DA plugin
3 Internally I think this is much much cleaner. It uses the
4 libcdio for disk reading and libcddb to get CDDB information.
7 - Can specify device as well as track.
8 - Because we use the libcdio library, the "device" can be a disk image
9 to be burned (e.g. a cdrdao bin/cue pair and some primitive Nero
13 - Can customize the what to show in the play-list title
14 - Media information is shown using CDDB
16 - Will scan for a CD-ROM drive with a CD-DA loaded in it.
18 -----------------------------------------------------------------
20 -----------------------------------------------------------------
21 If you're new to using the plugin some, here are some common things
22 that will probably trip you up.
24 -----------------------------------------------------------------
26 -----------------------------------------------------------------
28 the vlc CD-DA plugin, identifies itself in the vlc GUI as CDDAX. It
29 also registers itelf to handle a class of MRL's that start with
32 The CDDAX MRL takes the following form:
34 cddax://[path to file or CD-DA device][@[Tt]number]]
36 A simple cddax:// runs the default item: track 1 using the default CD
37 device (perhaps /dev/cdrom). The default default device is
40 It is however also possible to specify both Compact Disc device/filename
41 and item explicitly in the MRL.
43 For example cddax://dev/cdrom2 specifies using device /dev/cdrom2 which
44 might useful if as I have /dev/cdrom is a burner and the /dev/cdrom2
45 is a read-only device. And cddax://test_cdda.cue specifies the
46 "cuesheet" file for a CD-DA image on disk created say with cdrdao.
47 (test_cdda.bin is the corresponding bin file, but using that won't
50 After the optional device name or file name, you can name the track
51 number unit which preceded by a @ or an @ and T in either case. A MRL
52 which ends in an @ is like not adding it at all.
54 Some examples of MRLS are given below. In the examples, we assume the
55 following configuration setting:
57 cdda.default_device:/dev/cdrom
59 cddax:// - track 1 of device: /dev/cdrom
60 cddax://@ - same as above
61 cddax:///dev/cdrom - probably same as above
62 cddax:///dev/cdrom2 - track 1 of /dev/cdrom2
63 cddax:///dev/cdrom2@ - same as above
64 cddax://dev/cdrom2@53 - track 53 from /dev/cdrom2
65 cddax://dev/cdrom2@T53 - Same as above
66 cddax://dev/cdrom2@t53 - Same as above
67 cddax://@2 - track 2 from default device
68 cddax://3 - track 3 from default device
69 cddax:///tmp/ntsc.cue - track 1 from /tmp/ntsc.bin, (a bin/cue
71 cddax:///tmp/ntsc.cue@ - same as above
72 cddax://tmp/ntsc.cue@ - track 1 of tmp/ntsc.bin. NOT the
73 the same as above unless the cwd is /.
74 cddax://ntsc.nrg - track 1 of ntsc.nrg (a nero disk image)
75 cddax://tmp/ntsc.nrg@5 - track 5 of /tmp/ntsc.nrg
78 cddax://@x - x is not a number
80 cddax:/ - must start cddax://
82 -----------------------------------------------------------------
83 Configuration settings:
84 -----------------------------------------------------------------
86 Configuration settings in vlc are generally put in ~/.vlc/vlcrc. A
87 description of the ones specific to CDDAX are listed below.
92 This gives a format used in the playlist title string.
93 Similar to the Unix date command, there are format specifiers
94 that start with a percent sign for which various information is filled
95 in dynamically. The control specifiers are given as below
97 %a : The album artist **
98 %A : The album information **
103 %m : The CD-DA Media Catalog Number (MCN)
104 %n : The number of tracks on the CD
105 %p : The artist/performer/composer in the track **
106 %T : The track number **
107 %s : Number of seconds in this track
109 %Y : The year 19xx or 20xx **
112 ** Only available if CDDB is enabled
114 The default if CDDB is enabled is
122 # email given on cddb requests
123 # string, default: me@home
128 # Do we use CDDB to retrieve CD information?
134 # Contact CDDB via the HTTP protocol?
140 # numeric, default: 8880
145 # The server CDDB contacts to get CD info
146 # string, default: freedb.freedb.org
151 An integer (interpreted as a bit mask) which shows additional
152 debugging information see the section below on debugging for more
153 information about the bits that can be set.
158 What to use if no drive specified. If null, we'll scan for CD
159 drives with a CD-DA loaded in it.
163 -----------------------------------------------------------------
164 Troubleshooting Guide
165 -----------------------------------------------------------------
167 This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More detailed and
168 lower-level information is given in the next section DEBUGGING.
170 Problem: I don't get anything playing. I can't even get a playlist of
172 Determination: start at step 1.
174 Problem: Okay, I something plays menu now. But I don't see information
175 about the CD in the playlist.
176 Determination: start at step 5.
178 1. Do you even have the plugin loaded?
180 When you run the vlc GUI, under Settings/Preferences you should see
181 a "plugins" expandable list and under that another "access" list do
182 you see a expandalbe entry under "access" labeled "cddax"? If so,
185 a) If no "cddax" expandable list, thent the CDDAX plugin isn't
186 loaded. Does a shared object exist? The plugin shared object is
187 called "libcddax_plugin.so" It should be in the directory that has
188 ...vlc/access. If this isn't around you need to build and install
191 b) if libcddax_plugin.so is in the fileystem, there might be a
192 loader error; perhaps libcdio is not installed or
193 are the wrong version. Use ldd on the file to see that it has all
194 of the libraries dependencies satisfied. Also you might be able
195 check if there was an attempt to load it by tracking system
196 calls. On Linux and other OS's) "strace" can be used to see if the
197 file gets accessed. On Solaris use "truss".
199 For example on Linux, amonst the many line of output when I run
200 "strace -e trace=file vlc" I see this amongst lots of other
204 stat64("/usr/local/lib/vlc/access/libcddax_plugin.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=238921, ...}) = 0
205 open("/usr/local/lib/vlc/access/libcddax_plugin.so", O_RDONLY) = 5
207 The parameters inside the calls may be different depending on where
208 vlc is installed and what release is installed. If the the file is
211 There may also be a message may under "setup/logs".
213 2. (There plugin was loaded and preferences found). In the "cddax" tab
214 of preference. An important selection is "vcdx-device." If this is
215 set to the empty string, CDDAX will try to scan your drives for a
216 suitable device if the driver has the capability to scan for
217 drives. However you can set the device to something of your
218 choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be "/dev/cdrom" and on Solaris it
219 may be "/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0". If you set this field, make sure
220 these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I
221 generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd
222 rather than /dev/cdrom.
224 3. (CD-DA Setup devices seems correct and there is a CD in the
225 drive). Bring up the playlist. If you specified only a drive and
226 no track, you should see in the playlist a list of tracks on the CD.
228 a. If not something's wrong like step 2. Another tack may be to try
229 to read a disk image of a CD and thus elimate any problems with
230 hardware. If this works, then this is a hardware problem.
232 4. (You have a list of entries describing the CD-DA or disk-file of
235 There should be at least one "track" listed for the CD-DA and track
236 1 will end with the digit 1. If there are NO tracks listed then
237 there may be a problem with the that particular medium. So as in
238 step 3 you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from
241 5. <<Fill in info about CDDB hacking>>
243 -----------------------------------------------------------------
245 -----------------------------------------------------------------
247 **General vlc debugging...
249 Before delving to things specific to this plugin, some preparation may
250 be in order. You'll probably want to configure vlc with "--enable-debug".
251 plugin with debug information. Instead of "make'ing" with "make", use
252 "make debug" and instead of installing using "make install" use "make
255 I use gdb to debug. Debugging vlc with the entire suite of plugins
256 under gdb is slow because it has to read in symbol tables from all the
257 plugins. There are two ways to make loading faster when debugging. The
258 simplest is just to go to the plugin directory and remove unused
259 plugins. Another approach is create a new directory and make
260 (symbolic) links into the complete plugin directory. Another way to
261 speed up gdb loading is to attach the debugger after vlc has started up
264 gdb -p *pid-of-vlc-process*
268 It's a fact of life that this plugin may be in an incomplete state
269 and/or will have bugs. So to facilitate tracking down problems we let
270 you see what's going on dynamically. Various debugging settings will
271 cause output to appear on vlc's plugin log and/or "standard error"
272 (assuming you've run vlc in a way that you can capture this).
274 You think of debug switches as a bit mask, that you specifiy as an
275 integers the various "bit" values (given in decimal) are listed below.
277 name value description
278 ---------- ----- -----------
279 META 1 Meta information
280 EVENT 2 Trace keyboard events
282 EXT 8 Calls from external routines
285 SEEK 64 Seeks to set location
286 CDIO 128 Debugging from CDIO
287 CDDB 256 CDDB debugging
291 The tool cd-info from libcdio can be used to show the contents and
292 analyze the contents of a CD.
294 The tool cd-read from libcdio can be used to show the sectors of
295 the CD or CD image or extract sectors.