SGI Freeware: xmcd 3.2.0

xmcd-3.2.0: description + notes

Xmcd is a full-featured CD Player and Ripper software package. It includes two programs:

xmcd - for the X window system using the Motif® graphical user interface

cda - a shell command-line utility which also features a curses-based, screen-oriented mode

Both utilities transform your CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW or DVD drive into a stereo CD player, allowing you to play music CDs on your computer. Moreover, they also work as a CD ripper which allows you to extract full-quality digital audio data from your CDs and play them real time, save them to files or pipe them to other utilities for processing. Many file formats are supported, including WAV, AU, AIFF and Ogg Vorbis.

Xmcd supports CD recognition via Gracenote CDDB®. It can connect to the CDDB servers on the Internet to get the artist, disc title, song titles and other information about the CD you're playing. Xmcd works with many firewall proxy configurations for CDDB server access.

Xmcd also contain wwwWarp, a connection to the web browser that offers search and dynamic content capabilities based on the CD you're listening to. Local Discography is a sub-feature of wwwWarp, and provides a browser-based means of navigating and maintaining your CD collection, sound files, and other related data. There is also a feature-specific help and documentation system, command-line and remote control.

Unlike earlier releases of fw_xmcd, this version supports CDDA pass-thru, which lets it work with internal O2 drives where the headphone jack is inaccessible.

SECURITY DISCLOSURE

The two Xmcd programs are setrootid applications. Please read the README for details, but the security risks are minimal.

Also, Xmcd creates several world-writable directories, so that the local discography database can be added to by any user. The directories are located under /usr/freeware/lib/X11/xmcd/discog, and making these directories read-only will have no ill effect on the operation of Xmcd, and will still allow users to fetch entries from the network database.

Configuration and setup

After installation you must configure xmcd and cda to recognize your CD-ROM unit(s) using the script /usr/freeware/lib/X11/xmcd/config/config.sh. To see your CD drive manufacturer and model number run:
scsicontrol -i /dev/scsi/sc??????

Known Bugs

The Toshiba drives in some older SGI systems have trouble with CDDA pass-through. If you are (for example) trying to play discs over the SCSI bus on an O2 and get very poor performance try disabling Jitter correction.
Some CD drives slow down to 1x speed when operating in DAE mode (the Toshiba XM-5701TA is an example). This, coupled with the fact that xmcd pre-buffers a configurable amount of audio data will cause a 5-6 second delay before you will start to hear something. There is nothing you can do about it, apart from maybe tweaking the config files with a text editor.
xmcd may not perform well with the FF and REW buttons while playing. If you want to skim over an audio track, open the keypad window (the small remote control icon) and use its slider: the music will stop for one or two seconds, but then will restart at the selected point.
The xmcd the volume slider and balance control are tied 1:1 to the apanel default output sliders. Adjusting one will affect the other. Because of this the xmcd volume slider may not have fine granularity: it maps the IRIX audio device range to values of 0 - 100, but then moves by the stepping specified by the audio device (that is, not all the 100 possible values are selectable).
xmcd doesn't track Proxy server Port numbers correctly. If you're using a proxy server that is not on port 80 and cannot access the CDDB database after restarting xmcd visit the "Options..." dialog, select "CDDB & CD-Text", and change the proxy port number. It will already display the correct number, but the program isn't actually using it. Add and remove a digit, Save, and either press "Reload" in the "CD Information / Track Program Editor" dialog or re-insert the CD.

Special thanks to Andrea Suatoni (a.suatoni@telefonica.net) for helping port this package to IRIX.
To auto-install this package, go back and click on the respective install icon.