I am using the CD ripping functionality of K3B to rip audio CDs into MP3 format. I had ripped ~170 CDs using this function, but was somewhat disapointed by the ripping speed. ~15 minutes/CD. Nonetheless, I like the k3b interface and simply lived with the ripping speed. While in the process of ripping yet another CD, I happened to open kde-base/kscd to investigate it's functionality as a CDDB editor. While in KsCD, I happened to click on it's "Next" button. Suddenly, I could hear the CD player speed up and could visually see that the k3b ripping speed increase dramatically. I have now reproduced this behavior (k3b speedup by clicking KsCD "next" button) on many CDs. I seems to me that for some reason k3b is not properly setting the CD read speed and that something in KsCD sends whatever signal to the CD player to increase it's speed, to the benfit of k3b.
Steps to reproduce 1. Start k3b 2. insert CD 3. click the CD in the k3b GUI 4. click the gear icon in the k3b right pane 5. Click the "Start ripping" button Then: 1. Start kscd (if not already started) 2. Click the kscd GUI "Next" button The read speed of k3b will noticably increase. Without using the kscd trick - Takes ~15 minutes/CD With kscd trick Takes ~ 5 minutes/CD Please note that k3b does provide a dialog to set the read speed - This setting has no effect. emerge --info Portage 2.0.51.22-r3 (default-linux/amd64/2005.0, gcc-3.4.4, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.12-gentoo-r10 x86_64) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r10 x86_64 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 3500+ Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5-r2, 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.20 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe" CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/splash /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j3" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.namerica.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="amd64 X aac alsa amd apache2 apm arts audiofile avi bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cdr cdrom crypt cups curl dvd dvdr eds emboss encode esd exif expat fam ffmpeg flac foomaticdb fortran ftp gdbm gif glibc-omitfp glut gmp gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 idn imagemagick imlib innodb ipv6 java jpeg junit kde kdeenablefinal lcms libwww lm_sensors logitech-mouse lzw lzw-tiff mad mhash mng motif mp3 mpeg msql mysql mysqli ncurses nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia ogg opengl oracle pam pcre pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline samba sdl server seti slp spell ssl swat tcpd tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb userlocales vorbis wxgtk1 xine xml2 xpm xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS speedy ~ # esearch k3b [ Results for search key : k3b ] [ Applications found : 1 ] * app-cdr/k3b Latest version available: 0.12.8 Latest version installed: 0.12.8 Size of downloaded files: 7,850 kB Homepage: http://www.k3b.org/ Description: K3b, KDE CD Writing Software License: GPL-2 speedy ~ # speedy ~ # esearch kscd [ Results for search key : kscd ] [ Applications found : 1 ] * kde-base/kscd Latest version available: 3.5.0 Latest version installed: 3.5.0 Size of downloaded files: 5,390 kB Homepage: http://www.kde.org/ Description: KDE CD player License: GPL-2 CD/CDRW/DVDW drive: TSSTcorp - CD/DVDW TS-H552U
To clarify what I think the bug with k3b is: k3b CD ripping speed is slow. The bug, to me, is that k3b does not seem to attempt to optimize read speed, nor does it provide a functional means of setting the read speed. I am not sure if this is really a bug, or just a request for enhancement. That is, k3b may be working as designed, and would need an enhancement to allow it to properly determine the optimal/maximum read speed. Whether bug or enhancement, improving k3b's ability to automatically set read speed would greatly improve the ripping functionality of k3b. Additional information: In addition to clicking the KsCD "Next" button, clicking the "Play" button also causes the speed of the CD player to increase, result in significantly reduce ripping time in k3b.
That's a strange phenomenon! However we cannot do much for it, you should report it at http://bugs.kde.org so that k3b developers can take a look at it, this is probably not specific to Gentoo.
Thanks very much for checking. I wasn't sure what the proper procedure was. I have opened bug 118913 with KDE "K3B CD ripping function slow:"
