Quote:
Originally Posted by MeSue
So I have been adding my audiobooks to Calibre as empty records (or in some cases not empty if I also have the ebook) and then I tag them as audiobook. But currently I have no pointers to the audio files which are stored separately from my ebooks on my home server. If I wanted to add pointers… which would be preferable, m3u or lnk files? I will experiment with both, but thought I would ask if anyone has experimented and has advice.
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If you try to put a shortcut file (.LNK) into calibre via Add Books then the windows API kicks in and presents the shortcut target to the calibre Add functions - which is exactly what its supposed to do. Applications are not normally expected to process the actual shortcut files, they're expected to process the target files. But there is a means via which you can get a shortcut folder into a calibre book folder and and have it appear as if it were a format file.
You may want to put calibre into your Send To folder if its not already there
Press Win+r to bring up Run Dialog, type shell:sendto enter. This will open your Send To folder. you need to drop a shortcut to the calibre program into that folder. The simplest way is to press Win, in search box type calibre the calibre executable should be at top of results - right button drag drop it to the Send to folder and select Create shortcuts - see attachment. Close the Send To folder.
Make sure your Add Books preferences has the
Mark newly added books checkbox ticked
Assuming you can see the server folders from Windows Explorer then
- Create a shortcut (.lnk) file to the audio file (eg mp3) that's on your server - on the desktop will do.
- Select the book to which you want to add the link to the MP3 and Mark It, select Show Marked Books from Mark Books - so there will only be one book showing.
- Either drag drop the .LNK into the book list. Or I select the shortcut to the MP3 on the desktop, navigate to and select Send To->calibre
- Now you should have two Marked Books, use sorting to get the actual book as the
first row, with the LNK file book as the second. Select both books (ctrl/a), now click Edit Metadata->Merge Book Records->Merge into first select book delete others.
- Now you should have one marked book, and the LNK should be in the View list, click it and the mp3/flac should play - from the server.
It sounds complicated, but once you have calibre in your Send To folder and you are comfortable with creating shortcuts via right button drag drop its easy.
You could do similar with the m3u playlists, but add file direct (I assume they're not very big). But be aware that you will then have a copy of the playlist on your server and in the calibre library. If that matters, create a shortcut (.LNK) for the playlist and add that to calibre as above.
The advantage of using a shortcut is that if you're running the Distributed Link Service (which IMO you should be) then if you move the shortcut target (ie the mp3 or m3u) there's a good chance that Windows will find it and fix the shortcut - works better in Win7 than it did on XP.
BR