News

• April 23, 2004: The Latest release is Xmcd 3.3.2
• Bug: With xmcd 3.3.2, submitting to the "classic" CDDB service fails. Download and apply this source code patch if you compile xmcd from source. The precompiled binary kits will be updated for the next xmcd release.
• General: The xmcd executable in the pre-compiled binary kit for Solaris may output some warning messages about FONTLIST_DEFAULT_TAG_STRING during startup. These are harmless and can be ignored.

Features

This release of xmcd features the following:

• Standard functions
  • Play/Pause
  • Stop
  • Next/Previous Disc
  • Next/Previous Track
  • Next/Previous Index
  • Fast forward/rewind with audio scanning
  • Load/Eject
  • On/Off
• Multi-disc changer support
  • Disc change
  • Multi-disc playback
  • Reverse multi-disc playback
• Direct access keypad
  • Disc and track change
  • track-warp slider controls
• Volume control
  • Selectable volume taper characteristics
    • Linear
    • Square
    • Inverse square
• Balance control
  • left/right slider control and centering button
• Channel routing control
  • Normal stereo
  • Reversed stereo
  • Mono-L
  • Mono-R
  • Mono-L+R
• Main display
  • Disc number
  • Track number
  • Index number
  • Time display modes
    • Elapsed track time
    • Elapsed segment time
    • Elapsed disc time
    • Remaining track time
    • Remaining segment time
    • Remaining disc time
• Status display
  • Current play status
  • A->B segment play mode or Program mode
  • CD information indicator - "CDDB²", "CDDB", "CDtext", "local", "err" or none
• Track programming
  • Custom play list
  • Click and choose from track list, or edit the sequence directly
  • Save or clear
• Shuffle play function
  • Play all tracks on the CD in random order
• Repeat function with iteration counter
  • Repeat track
  • Repeat program
  • Repeat disc
  • Repeat segment
  • Repeat all discs (multi-disc changer)
• Sample function
  • Play a few seconds of each track
• A->B segment play function
  • User selectable start and end segment points that can span track boundaries
• Eject inhibit option
  • Prevent someone from ejecting the disc by pressing the button on the drive
• Playback mode selection
  • Standard playback
  • CDDA real-time playback
  • CDDA Save to file
  • CDDA Pipe to external program
  • CDDA jitter correction
  • Audio file/stream output formats: RAW, AU, WAV, AIFF, AIFF-C, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, MP4, AAC (MPEG-2 and MPEG-4).
  • Many adjustable parameters to suit every requirement for compressed audio encoding speed, file size, and audio quality.
  • Low-pass and high-pass digital filters for MP3 encoding, with adjustable frequency and width.
  • Auto-fill MP3 ID3 tag (both version 1 and 2 are supported), or Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and MP4 metadata sections.
  • CDDA Performance monitor
  • CDDA Thread priority tuning
  • CDDA playback output port selector
  • CDDA level attenuator control
  • CDDA level fade-in and fade-out controls
• Automation options
  • On CD load
    • Auto caddy lock
    • Spin down
    • Auto-play
  • On play completion
    • Auto-eject
  • On CD eject
    • Auto-exit
  • On program exit
    • Auto-stop
    • Auto-eject
• Track Program function
  • Play tracks in custom order
  • Can be saved to file
• Gracenote CDDB® Music Recognition Service^SM support
  • Query and display CD information from Internet CDDB server
    • Album artist and title
    • Track titles
    • Album genre and sub-genre
    • Disc notes
    • Track notes
  • Support for firewall HTTP proxy servers and proxy authorization
  • Local cachestore
  • Edit and Submit information to CDDB
  • Enhanced CDDB²® features on some platforms
    • Artist full name
    • Sort titles
    • Record label
    • Year
    • Compilation flag
    • Secondary genres and sub-genres
    • Geographical region
    • Album primary language
    • Track beats per minute
    • Disc number of set, total number in set
    • Disc, track and segment credit lists
    • Segment list
    • Internationalization support
    • CDDB Music Browser
    • CDDB-provided dynamic content (web links)
    • CDDB² user registration
• CD-TEXT support on capable drives and CDs made with CD-TEXT data
• Displays Media Catalog Number (UPC/barcode) and International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) on capable drives and CDs recorded with such data.
• Scan and show disc titles in each slot of a CD changer
• wwwWarp
  • Web integration supporting the Netscape Navigator/Communicator, Mozilla, Galeon and Opera web browsers.
  • Direct access to the official Xmcd web site
  • Search the web for information about the disc artist and title that is currently loaded.
  • Pre-configured list of popular web search engines for related content.
  • Local Discography for viewing/playing/printing documents, images, digital sound files and other files related to each CD. Moreover, .m3u and .pls format playlist files are auto-generated in the presence of each supported digital audio file format.
• Display "Message of The Day" information from the xmcd MOTD service as well as notify the user of new versions.
• Dual-mode main window
  • Toggle between the full-feature main window, or a small-footprint "basic" mode.
• Tool-tips
  • Main window controls feature pop-up descriptions including hotkey mnemonics.
• Command line control
  • An xmcd operation can be invoked via the command line during startup.
  • Remote control: Send commands to another running xmcd session, using the -remote option.
• On-line help
  • Feature-specific help information available via a single mouse click.
  • Read xmcd documentation using the help system.
• Keyboard-friendly
  • The complete application can be operated via the keyboard with full support for keyboard traversal and hotkeys.
• Internationalization
  • All labels and messages can be localized to non-English languages via X resources.
• Attractive, intuitive-to-use
  • Motif user interface with 3D appearance
• Theme and appearance customization
  • Fonts, colors, background and other appearance items are user-customizable using X resource settings.
• Device-specific configuration files
  • Adaptable to most computer CD or DVD drives.

Xmcd uses the Motif toolkit to achieve a pleasing appearance, such that it actually looks and feels like a real CD player for all basic functions, yet takes advantage of the GUI and window system to make programming and CD database functions easy.

Currently, the cda utility offers almost the same functionality as xmcd except the FF, REW, Sample, A->B and wwwWarp features are not available. Also, the CD information capability is read-only via cda (no updates). In addition, a visual mode is available that turns cda into a screen- oriented (curses-based) CD player.

Planned Future Features

• Improved ID3 tagging for MP3 output files.
• Improved jitter correction algorithm

Latest Source Code Compilation Notes

• If you're compiling xmcd-3.3.0 through 3.3.2 on a Linux system with ALSA-0.9.x, you may get a compilation error in cdda_d/wr_alsa.c. This patch for wr_alsa.c should fix the compilation error.
• It has been reported that xmcd-3.3.x may encounter problems on some Linux systems with ALSA while playing in "CDDA playback" mode. If you encounter this problem, the workaround is to set xmcd to play in OSS mode (change the cddaWriteMethod parameter to 1 in your xmcd device configuration file), and be sure that the OSS emulation module "snd_pcm_oss" is loaded on your system. The fix for this problem will appear in the next release.
• If xmcd crashes immediately after start-up, you compiled your own xmcd executable from source, and you have an early version of X11R5, try this remedy:
  
  If you used imake to generate xmcd's Makefiles, add -DNO_LABELH to the DEFINES= line of your labelh_d/Makefile and xmcd_d/Makefile.
  
  If you used Makefile.std and make.inc to compile xmcd, add -DNO_LABELH to the MISC= line of your make.inc file.
  
  Recompile/reinstall and the problem should be solved.

Change Log

Read the CHANGES file for the comprehensive list.