03 Mar 09 Changing how your VortexBox rips files

Now that you have your VortexBox working you may want more fine grain control over how VortexBox rips files. You may want your VortexBox to only rip to mp3 or name the files in a different way. VortexBox is designed to be hacked unlike closed commercial products. This document will show you how to make these changes.

All of the configurations for autoripping are in /etc/ripit/config file. You can use nano to make changes to this file. You may want to backup the file first in case you make a mistake.  From command line type.

cp /etc/ripit/config /etc/ripit/config.old
nano /etc/ripit/config

All the lines that start with # are comments. They help you know what the options are and have no effect on how the ripper works. You can add comment yourself to remember what changes you made to the config file and why.

The first section is coder. The controls what type of files VortexBox rips to. VortexBox can rip to one or all of them at the same time. Set it equal to the types of file you want as shown below.

# coder: Select encoders for audio files
# 0 - Lame (mp3)
# 1 - Oggenc (ogg)
# 2 - Flac (flac)
# 3 - Faac (m4a)
# Multiple encoders can be selected by giving
# a comma-separated list
# Example: coder=0,1,2 encodes CD twice to mp3, ogg and flac files

coder=0,2

The next three config file sections are for encoder options. These options are sent to the encoder during ripping. For example if you want to change the bitrate of mp3 files change the following option.

# bitrate: Sets bitrate for lame encoder
# Possible values: 32...320, off
# Should be set to "off" if vbr is used
# Default: 128

bitrate=128

The next section is Trackname and directory template. You can make all kinds of change here. You can change the way the ripped files are named and the folders they are put into after they are ripped. Keep in mind that all the other services in VortexBox expect mp3 files to be in /storage/music/mp3 and FLAC files to be in /storage/music/flac. If you change these you will need to make change in SqueezeCenter, DAAP (iTunes) service, Samba sharing, etc. So all the other parts of VortexBox can find the files.

Another option you may want to change is wav=0 and cdtoc=0. If you change these both to 1 VortexBox will keep the wav files ripped from the CDs. It will also build a cue sheet for the CD that lists where the tracks go on the CD. This will take up a lot of space on your hard disk but you could us cdrecord later to create an exact duplicate of your CD.
That’s about it most of the other options should be left set tho their defaults.

After you edit the file you need to restart the autoripper. From command line

service vortexbox stop
service vortexbox start

That’s it. Have fun modifying your VortexBox!