Features over the older CD-DA plugin Internally I think this is much much cleaner. It uses the libcdio for disk reading and libcddb to get CDDB information. MRL handling: - Can specify device as well as track. - Because we use the libcdio library, the "device" can be a disk image to be burned (e.g. a cdrdao bin/cue pair and some primitive Nero support) Features: - Can customize the what to show in the play-list title - Media information is shown using CDDB - Dynamic debugging - Will scan for a CD-ROM drive with a CD-DA loaded in it. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Quick start ----------------------------------------------------------------- If you're new to using the plugin some, here are some common things that will probably trip you up. ----------------------------------------------------------------- MRLS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- the vlc CD-DA plugin, identifies itself in the vlc GUI as CDDAX. It also registers itelf to handle a class of MRL's that start with cddax://. The CDDAX MRL takes the following form: cddax://[path to file or CD-DA device][@[Tt]number]] A simple cddax:// runs the default item: track 1 using the default CD device (perhaps /dev/cdrom). The default default device is user-configurable. It is however also possible to specify both Compact Disc device/filename and item explicitly in the MRL. For example cddax://dev/cdrom2 specifies using device /dev/cdrom2 which might useful if as I have /dev/cdrom is a burner and the /dev/cdrom2 is a read-only device. And cddax://test_cdda.cue specifies the "cuesheet" file for a CD-DA image on disk created say with cdrdao. (test_cdda.bin is the corresponding bin file, but using that won't work.) After the optional device name or file name, you can name the track number unit which preceded by a @ or an @ and T in either case. A MRL which ends in an @ is like not adding it at all. Some examples of MRLS are given below. In the examples, we assume the following configuration setting: cdda.default_device:/dev/cdrom cddax:// - track 1 of device: /dev/cdrom cddax://@ - same as above cddax:///dev/cdrom - probably same as above cddax:///dev/cdrom2 - track 1 of /dev/cdrom2 cddax:///dev/cdrom2@ - same as above cddax://dev/cdrom2@53 - track 53 from /dev/cdrom2 cddax://dev/cdrom2@T53 - Same as above cddax://dev/cdrom2@t53 - Same as above cddax://@2 - track 2 from default device cddax://3 - track 3 from default device cddax:///tmp/ntsc.cue - track 1 from /tmp/ntsc.bin, (a bin/cue disk image) cddax:///tmp/ntsc.cue@ - same as above cddax://tmp/ntsc.cue@ - track 1 of tmp/ntsc.bin. NOT the the same as above unless the cwd is /. cddax://ntsc.nrg - track 1 of ntsc.nrg (a nero disk image) cddax://tmp/ntsc.nrg@5 - track 5 of /tmp/ntsc.nrg Bad MRL's cddax://@x - x is not a number cddax/tmp - no colon cddax:/ - must start cddax:// ----------------------------------------------------------------- Configuration settings: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Configuration settings in vlc are generally put in ~/.vlc/vlcrc. A description of the ones specific to CDDAX are listed below. - - cddax-title-format This gives a format used in the playlist title string. Similar to the Unix date command, there are format specifiers that start with a percent sign for which various information is filled in dynamically. The control specifiers are given as below %a : The album artist ** %A : The album information ** %C : Category ** %I : CDDB disk ID ** %G : Genre ** %M : The current MRL %m : The CD-DA Media Catalog Number (MCN) %n : The number of tracks on the CD %p : The artist/performer/composer in the track ** %T : The track number ** %s : Number of seconds in this track %t : The name ** %Y : The year 19xx or 20xx ** %% : a % ** Only available if CDDB is enabled The default if CDDB is enabled is Track %T. %t - %p Or %T %M otherwise - - cddax-cddb_email # email given on cddb requests # string, default: me@home - - cddax-cddb_enabled # Do we use CDDB to retrieve CD information? # bool, default: 1 - - cddax-cddb-http # Contact CDDB via the HTTP protocol? # bool, default: 0 - - cddax-cddb-port # numeric, default: 8880 - - cddax-cddb-server # The server CDDB contacts to get CD info # string, default: freedb.freedb.org - - cddax-debug An integer (interpreted as a bit mask) which shows additional debugging information see the section below on debugging for more information about the bits that can be set. - - cddax-device What to use if no drive specified. If null, we'll scan for CD drives with a CD-DA loaded in it. # string, default: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Troubleshooting Guide ----------------------------------------------------------------- This gives higher-level troubleshooting. More detailed and lower-level information is given in the next section DEBUGGING. Problem: I don't get anything playing. I can't even get a playlist of the CD. Determination: start at step 1. Problem: Okay, I something plays menu now. But I don't see information about the CD in the playlist. Determination: start at step 5. 1. Do you even have the plugin loaded? When you run the vlc GUI, under Settings/Preferences you should see a "plugins" expandable list and under that another "access" list do you see a expandalbe entry under "access" labeled "cddax"? If so, skip on to step 2. a) If no "cddax" expandable list, thent the CDDAX plugin isn't loaded. Does a shared object exist? The plugin shared object is called "libcddax_plugin.so" It should be in the directory that has ...vlc/access. If this isn't around you need to build and install the CDDAX plugin. b) if libcddax_plugin.so is in the fileystem, there might be a loader error; perhaps libcdio is not installed or are the wrong version. Use ldd on the file to see that it has all of the libraries dependencies satisfied. Also you might be able check if there was an attempt to load it by tracking system calls. On Linux and other OS's) "strace" can be used to see if the file gets accessed. On Solaris use "truss". For example on Linux, amonst the many line of output when I run "strace -e trace=file vlc" I see this amongst lots of other output: ... stat64("/usr/local/lib/vlc/access/libcddax_plugin.so", {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=238921, ...}) = 0 open("/usr/local/lib/vlc/access/libcddax_plugin.so", O_RDONLY) = 5 The parameters inside the calls may be different depending on where vlc is installed and what release is installed. If the the file is found and "opened", There may also be a message may under "setup/logs". 2. (There plugin was loaded and preferences found). In the "cddax" tab of preference. An important selection is "vcdx-device." If this is set to the empty string, CDDAX will try to scan your drives for a suitable device if the driver has the capability to scan for drives. However you can set the device to something of your choosing. On GNU/Linux, this may be "/dev/cdrom" and on Solaris it may be "/vol/dev/aliases/cdrom0". If you set this field, make sure these are correct for your particular setup. For example, I generally play out of the DVD device and this is called /dev/dvd rather than /dev/cdrom. 3. (CD-DA Setup devices seems correct and there is a CD in the drive). Bring up the playlist. If you specified only a drive and no track, you should see in the playlist a list of tracks on the CD. a. If not something's wrong like step 2. Another tack may be to try to read a disk image of a CD and thus elimate any problems with hardware. If this works, then this is a hardware problem. 4. (You have a list of entries describing the CD-DA or disk-file of a CD-DA image.) There should be at least one "track" listed for the CD-DA and track 1 will end with the digit 1. If there are NO tracks listed then there may be a problem with the that particular medium. So as in step 3 you can try a known good sample and perhaps burn a CD from that. 5. <> ----------------------------------------------------------------- Debugging ----------------------------------------------------------------- **General vlc debugging... Before delving to things specific to this plugin, some preparation may be in order. You'll probably want to configure vlc with "--enable-debug". plugin with debug information. Instead of "make'ing" with "make", use "make debug" and instead of installing using "make install" use "make install-debug". I use gdb to debug. Debugging vlc with the entire suite of plugins under gdb is slow because it has to read in symbol tables from all the plugins. There are two ways to make loading faster when debugging. The simplest is just to go to the plugin directory and remove unused plugins. Another approach is create a new directory and make (symbolic) links into the complete plugin directory. Another way to speed up gdb loading is to attach the debugger after vlc has started up via a command like: gdb -p *pid-of-vlc-process* **cddax debugging... It's a fact of life that this plugin may be in an incomplete state and/or will have bugs. So to facilitate tracking down problems we let you see what's going on dynamically. Various debugging settings will cause output to appear on vlc's plugin log and/or "standard error" (assuming you've run vlc in a way that you can capture this). You think of debug switches as a bit mask, that you specifiy as an integers the various "bit" values (given in decimal) are listed below. name value description ---------- ----- ----------- META 1 Meta information EVENT 2 Trace keyboard events MRL 4 MRL debugging EXT 8 Calls from external routines CALL 16 all calls LSN 32 LSN changes SEEK 64 Seeks to set location CDIO 128 Debugging from CDIO CDDB 256 CDDB debugging **CD debugging... The tool cd-info from libcdio can be used to show the contents and analyze the contents of a CD. The tool cd-read from libcdio can be used to show the sectors of the CD or CD image or extract sectors.