audiobook player

[janvanmaar]

A simple audiobook player for Kindle 3 on top of mplayer and launchpad hacks (no GUI).

The official Kindle audiobook player suffers by several shortcomings which I wanted to workaround in this way. On the other hand, there is no GUI, so if you need graphical navigation then this is not for you.

Features

• possible to listen to an audiobook while reading the same book
• last position in all the audiobooks is automatically bookmarked
• improved navigation

Installation

1. Install the jailbreak, launchpad and mplayer hacks.
2. Download the attached ZIP file and copy control-audiobook.sh file to /mnt/base-us/mplayer directory on the Kindle and mplayer-audiobook.ini file to /mnt/base-us/launchpad directory
3. For each audiobook, create a directory in the /mnt/base-us/audible directory and copy all the audiobook files to this directory

Usage
The playback is controlled via the following launchpad keyboard shortcuts (as all launchpad shortcuts, the keys have to be pressed sequentially, not simultanously - have a look at the launchpad thread for more information):

Shift, Space = toggle stop/start listening from where previously stopped
Shift, Q = go to the beginning of the currently played file
Shift, Q, Q = go to the beginning of the currently played audiobook
Shift, N = go to the next file of the currently played audiobook
Shift, N, N = go to the next audiobook
Shift, P = go to the previous file of the currently played audiobook
Shift, P, P = go to the previous audiobook
Shift, Z = back (~10 seconds)
Shift, Z, Z = rewind (~100 seconds)
Shift, X = forward (~10 seconds)
Shift, X, X = fast forward (~100 seconds)

Notes

• No CPU is consumed by the audioplayer after the playback is stopped by Shift, Space
• The bookmarked positions are saved as files, surviving sleep/restart
• The playback order of books is alphabetical (of the book directories)
• If you go to next/previous book(s) then the playback always starts from the bookmarked (=last) position in that book
• If you go to next/previous file within a book (typically file within a book corresponds to chapter) then the playback always starts from the beginning of the file (chapter)
• The audiobook playback should be compatible with the original mplayer intended for music playback, just adding different keyboard shortcuts.

Known issues

• Occasionally, mplayer fails to recognize the correct position in some mp3 files. If you notice that bookmarking/seeking is sometimes shifted heavily then your best bet is to convert the files. I have never observed the issue with ogg files and most mp3 files work fine too.
• The commands are executed with 1-2 seconds delay. This delay is caused by the underlying launchpad hack which seems to execute a graphical notification before the command itself. The speed would improve automatically as soon as the launchpad speed would improve.
• Navigation through more than 3-4 audiobooks becomes somewhat cumbersome. Without a graphical interface, it is probably better to keep only those audiobooks on the Kindle that you are just listening to or planning to listen to soon. There is not too much space on the Kindle for many audiobooks anyway...

[Tanga]

Wow, nice. I'm not really into audiobooks, but for those that are this is truly awesome! Way to build functionality =).

[janvanmaar]

Updated to 0.2.1 (bugfix of not starting the next file at its beginning after seeking)

[atay]

great feature, thank You

is it possible to do Shift+Space as Start and Stop ? what should I change ?

In this version there is S Space for Start and S Space Space for stop.

[janvanmaar]

good idea, toggle is now default in 0.2.2

[janvanmaar]

The audiobook was intended for listening to audiobooks while reading, thus screensaver appearing after 10 minutes should not be a problem - however, if you want to prevent this, it can be done by replacing the following line in the control-audiobook.sh file:

$MPLAYER "$first" -ss $time -playlist ${PLAYLIST}_temp >$LOG 2>&1 &

by this line:

( lipc-set-prop com.lab126.powerd preventScreenSaver 1; $MPLAYER "$first" -ss $time -playlist ${PLAYLIST}_temp >$LOG 2>&1; lipc-set-prop com.lab126.powerd preventScreenSaver 0 ) &

Thanks to k3lover for pointing this out!

(I am not incorporating this change to the zip file as it is not required for the intended purpose and to be safer - it is unlikely that the script would be killed from some reason and the lipc command to turn the screensaver on again would not be executed but it is not impossible)

[janvanmaar]

A bug leading to occasionally wrong previous/next file navigation has been fixed in 0.2.3.

[soylencho]

Hi, I just installed this player, but the speed to which it's reading the files is faster than 1x, any comments on why this is happening?

[janvanmaar]

hi soylencho, it sounds like this mplayer bug:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...ayer&page=5#68
your best bet to fix it would probably be converting the files (the thread also mentions -srate option but you would need to set that manually for each song, I think)

[twobob]

Known issues

* The commands are executed with 1-2 seconds delay. This delay is caused by the underlying launchpad hack which seems to execute a graphical notification before the command itself. The speed would improve automatically as soon as the launchpad speed would improve.

Hi. you mention a lag via lauchpad commands.

There is a paramater withing the launchpad config (um... or ini I forget)
to reduce this detection delay time, it is set to 700 (.7 of a second) by default IIRC. Whilst this may not be 100% of the problem perhaps it may contribute?

enough time to mash 3 keys for we mere mortals

Perhaps playing with this value could adjust performance to your liking.

I don't run this so untested. Interesting use of mplayer though. perhaps I will.
Cheers