Using compressed files for audiobook organization

[Gilgeam]

Greetings friends,

I'm slowly moving all literature-related stuff to calibre and am trying to tackle audiobooks next. I did some research and found some folk like using .tar for this purpose. However, I have most of my audiobooks compressed in different formats, mostly ZIP, occasionally RAR. Since I can just put these into calibre, I'm a little bit confused if and why I should convert them to tar before I do. Can anyone offer some advice? Am I not seeing a problem that might occur in simply sticking with ZIP and RAR?

Thanks a lot for your patience and wisdom!

Gil

[itimpi]

I can see ZIP not being a good option as Calibre normally uses the ZIP extension for storing HTML books (which can consist of multiple files). I have seen ZAB mentioned as a common extension for ZIP'ed audiobooks so maybe that would be a good one to use?

Not quite sure why RAR should not be used unless it is the fact that Calibre peeks inside that format to see if it contains a recognisable eBook and if so extracts it before adding it to the Calibre library.

[Gilgeam]

Gotcha, I'll try to convert my files next chance I get. Thanks a lot, good Sir :-D

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by itimpi

I can see ZIP not being a good option as Calibre normally uses the ZIP extension for storing HTML books (which can consist of multiple files). I have seen ZAB mentioned as a common extension for ZIP'ed audiobooks so maybe that would be a good one to use?

Not quite sure why RAR should not be used unless it is the fact that Calibre peeks inside that format to see if it contains a recognisable eBook and if so extracts it before adding it to the Calibre library.

And, ZIP and RAR files are also auto-converted to CBZ and CBR if they contain nothing but images. I use this feature a lot for comics etc. So if I see a book has a ZIP or a RAR format then its probably a sign the archive I added has a stray non image file.

I would use a 7Z format for supplementary archives, e.g. for multi-part audio books, in part because my file manager can open them directly.

BR

[Gilgeam]

Oh... wow... once again I'm glad I asked, I'd never have figured this out for myself.

Thanks you two! You're like calibre's Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid :-D

[dickloraine]

Originally Posted by Gilgeam

Greetings friends,

I'm slowly moving all literature-related stuff to calibre and am trying to tackle audiobooks next. I did some research and found some folk like using .tar for this purpose. However, I have most of my audiobooks compressed in different formats, mostly ZIP, occasionally RAR. Since I can just put these into calibre, I'm a little bit confused if and why I should convert them to tar before I do. Can anyone offer some advice? Am I not seeing a problem that might occur in simply sticking with ZIP and RAR?

Thanks a lot for your patience and wisdom!

Gil

You could also convert them to for example mba, that way you can directly play them.