I couldn't find a plugin that could handle all the metadata features I wanted for audiobooks, so I expanded on Artur Kupiec's excellent audiobook metadata plugin (
https://github.com/akupiec/calibre_p...obook-metadata) and created a companion GUI plugin for reprocessing existing audiobooks.
These plugins requires Calibre version 7.0.0 or above to function correctly.
Both plugins support the following audio formats: m4b, m4a, mp3, ogg, opus, flac, wma, mp4, and aiff.
Plugin 1: Import Audiobooks Metadata (Import Plugin)
Description: This expanded version of the original plugin automatically imports metadata when adding new audiobooks to Calibre.
Version: 0.2.7
Released: January 09, 2025
Minimum Calibre Version: 7.0
Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS
Author: Artur Kupiec, expanded by Petrus Vermaak
History: Initial release for the expanded version.
Supported Formats: m4b, m4a, mp3, ogg, opus, flac, wma, mp4, aiff
Features:
- Automatically processes metadata when adding new audiobooks
- Extracts and imports:
- Title (removes common suffixes like "Unabridged" and "Audiobook")
- Authors (combines album artist, artist, and composer fields intelligently)
- Publication year
- Cover image
- Copyright information
- Genre tags
- Comments/description
- Duration (requires custom column setup)
- Robust error handling and validation
- Fallback to ffprobe for duration if the primary method fails
- Prevents duplicate author entries while maintaining proper order
Plugin 2: Fetch Audio Meta (GUI Plugin)
Description: This new companion plugin adds a graphical interface for updating metadata of audiobooks already in your Calibre library.
Version: 0.1.22
Released: January 09, 2025
Minimum Calibre Version: 7.0
Platforms: Windows, Linux, macOS
Author: Petrus Vermaak
History: Initial release for the expanded version.
Supported Formats: m4b, m4a, mp3, ogg, opus, flac, wma, mp4, aiff
Features:
- Select multiple books to process at once
- Choose which metadata fields to update:
- Title
- Authors
- Duration
- Year
- Genre
- Comments
- Cover Image
- Visual progress tracking with percentage complete
- Detailed error reporting for any issues encountered
- Preserves existing metadata for unselected fields
Important Note: To use the duration feature in either plugin, you must first create a custom column in Calibre:
- Go to Preferences → Add your own columns
- Create a new custom column with the following settings:
- Type: Text
- Heading: Duration
- Column name: duration
- Description: Audiobook duration in HH:MM:SS format
The plugins will then automatically populate this column with the audiobook's duration when importing or updating metadata.
Both plugins handle errors gracefully and provide feedback if any metadata fields couldn't be read or if files are damaged/unsupported. The GUI plugin particularly makes it easy to batch update metadata and see exactly what was updated or if any issues occurred during processing.
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