Series management for Audiobooks

[pwalker8]

It looks like you can edit certain meta data fields in Books but not others. It also looks like you can edit meta data for ebooks, but not for audiobooks. Unfortunate.

[pwalker8]

BTW, I ran across this project poking around this morning

https://openaudible.org/

It basically downloads. It will load and show all the meta information for an audible book. I don't see a way to change the meta info in the program, but it is an open source program with a github repository, so if you program, it might provide a clue.

[ACGAuthor]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

BTW, I ran across this project poking around this morning

https://openaudible.org/

It basically downloads. It will load and show all the meta information for an audible book. I don't see a way to change the meta info in the program, but it is an open source program with a github repository, so if you program, it might provide a clue.

Maybe they intend to roll out improvements in Books? idk. I get the feeling the created the books app with book sales in mind, rather than from a reader perspective. Which is no big surprise, but yeah, as you said, unfortunate.

I wish I did program, because if I did, I'd create this darned app because it irks me that there's this disconnect between what is really useful for audiobook connoisseurs and what we have to work with.

I'm not even joking that in the past couple days, my patience with this issue has gotten so thin that I've been on the verge of looking up how to do it myself and seeing if I could learn.

Ideally, we'd have something that works like Calibre for cataloging on our computers, but which has a device-side player app that you can sideload to (perhaps from Cloud storage?) which has more useful features than you can presently find in most of the audiobook listening apps.

Honestly, there are some podcast apps that are *SO CLOSE* to being ideal.

I fiddled around with Overcast and then I wished I hadn't because that was a waste of $10. I mean, the player is...okay? Nothing special, but it does what it needs to. But the only way to sideload to it (which is the premium feature you have to pay the $10 for) is to upload to THEIR server. You get 10GB of storage, which is fine you can load a decent number of audiobooks there, but the file size limit is 1GB and if you like higher-bitrate audiobooks it doesn't take long to hit that, so it's of limited utility to audiobook listeners.

I went back to Downcast, and for the $3 price, it's really a gorgeous app.











It has the ability to sort by date or title or a bunch of other options, so for series, you can either tweak the release date metadata to fall in proper order, or you can prepend the title with a series index.

I believe it gets the blurb info from the lyrics field, but I'm not entirely certain because I paste it into lyrics, song description and long description to make sure my bases are covered.

It has those great options for skipping forward or backward, but unfortunately they don't interface with the remote controls on the car stereo. Still, it looks great in CarPlay and apparently the lack of Prev/Next buttons on the display in CarPlay is a CarPlay thing, not an app thing, because overcast has the same issue.

The only things Downcast needs to be perfect are:

1) A chapter list. The timeline with the chapter markers is helpful, but if you know exactly which chapter you want to go to, you still have to skip through the others to get to it.

2) The ability to generate a "podcast" (i.e. a series) from the metadata. As it is, when you sideload into the app, you have to create a podcast and add the incoming file to it, or else it goes into an "untitled podcast" listing.

3) Better sideloading controls. The sideloading interface is...clunky. But it works. You can load from iCloud, from OneDrive (if you have the app installed) or using a filemanager app like Documents 6. From the OneDrive app you can select a file and choose "Open in Another App" and it will give you the option to open it in Downcast. You can AirDrop to Downcast as well.

However, I'm a little leery of how the file storage works. I've noticed that as I've been AirDropping to the app, the "Other" file that is supposedly app resources starts to balloon in size, even as Downcast itself gets larger as you load up your books.

Which suggests that I'm ended up with two copies of the file on my device, and I'm not entirely sure if the one in "Other" will get purged automatically or if it's going to present a problem later. When loading with OneDrive, it looked like OneDrive would have a copy of the file while DownCast did as well, because both apps would balloon with each file downloaded and opened in Downcast.

I guess I'll figure it out as I go. Worst comes to worst, I'll have to backup my phone and flush the memory with a reset occasionally.

[pwalker8]

I feel your pain on the "not quite what I want it to do" issue. I've been fighting that issue for a while. CarPlay helps a lot for me. Once Catalina is released, if collections sync between my main desktop and my iPhone like I think they will, I think it will be good enough for my needs with regards to listening to audiobooks in the car.

Right now, I'm experimenting with loading audiobooks in a separate database in Calibre and switching between my ebooks and my audiobooks. The plugin for loading audible/mp3 books isn't perfect, so it took a fair amount of work to fix all the data just so, but once it's there, it's just remembering to keep everything up to date, i.e. mark books as read in Calibre, etc. Not really all that different with regards to Calibre and ebooks. It's not perfect, but I suspect the only perfect would be something I wrote myself.

Just as aside on the CarPlay blanking out the screen issue, try going to your console's home button, to get the screen back, then bring CarPlay back up.

[ACGAuthor]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Right now, I'm experimenting with loading audiobooks in a separate database in Calibre and switching between my ebooks and my audiobooks. The plugin for loading audible/mp3 books isn't perfect, so it took a fair amount of work to fix all the data just so, but once it's there, it's just remembering to keep everything up to date, i.e. mark books as read in Calibre, etc. Not really all that different with regards to Calibre and ebooks. It's not perfect, but I suspect the only perfect would be something I wrote myself.

ikr? If I had the first inkling of a clue how to get started, I'd seriously be taking a crack at this. I'd probably start with OpenAudible and try to tweak it to my specifications. If I recall correctly, when I tried it, I stopped either because it would only convert books to MP3 (and I use M4B) or because it wouldn't accept any files except AAX? I don't remember. But I haven't looked at it very indepth because of one of those restrictions.

I tried loading one of my audiobooks into a separate database in Calibre, but the metadata fields were all wonky and the idea of fixing that for over a thousand files was just too daunting.

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Just as aside on the CarPlay blanking out the screen issue, try going to your console's home button, to get the screen back, then bring CarPlay back up.

I'll do that. I haven't had an issue since updating to iOS13 with its CarPlay changes, but we'll see.

[pwalker8]

OpenAudible basically pulls your library from audible with all the meta data. You can set it up to download the actual audible files or not. You can also set it up to automatically convert files or not. You can add other files, not just aax. For example, one of the few audiobooks that I didn't get from audible is the Harry Potter series. It pulled those books in just fine. The meta data is a whole lot cleaner and you can export the list with meta data into a csv file. I find that useful.

Yes, the audiobook plug in for calibre is a bit wonky. Some books are fine, some have the meta data off. I have a bit over 700 audiobooks. Yep, it took a while to fix the meta data correctly, but basically, I did 20 or 30 at a time and eventually got them all correct. The biggest issue was putting in the narrator in.

The nice thing about calibre is that once I get everything loaded, I could simply copy the db file around. Calibre doesn't actually need the audiobook files after that.

[ACGAuthor]

OpenAudible only seems to allow you to import AAX or MP3. It won't import my MP4 files. Unfortunate.

I'm so frustrated with my inability to code right now. In the past, I've been able to monkey-see/monkey-do some very simple HTML and XML coding, looking at other people's work and picking up on what they were doing and tweaking it to my own needs.

But Java is beyond my experience. I was able to download the open Audible project source code, install the tools to access and edit it (Java RDK and Eclipse) and open the project files. But from there...nothing. It could be written in Cyrillic for all the sense it makes to me.

Meh. I wish I'd taken more programming classes when I was younger.

[FrozenTrout]

So, I don't know if this will help. But there's software called Plex, that you run the server on your computer, and then can stream all your media to all of your devices (and even share with friends). It also allows you to build playlists: https://www.plex.tv

It doesn't have built-in support for audiobooks specifically, but you can add it as a music library, and use a podcast metadata agent (or just have it use from the files themselves).
You can use the Plex app on your phone to access them, but there's actually a third party iOS app specifically for podcasts called Prologue (and he also makes a music-specific Plex app called Prism): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/prologue/id1459223267

The Plex server software is free, though you can optionally subscribe to PlexPass for additional features (off the top of my head, I don't think any are necessary if you're doing audiobooks), and the official Plex client apps have a $5 IAP (though you can also just use a web browser for free).

The Prologue app is free to use and test out, but costs $5 to unlock all the features.

Now, you still need to manage the files and metadata somehow; probably best to use iTunes/Books to organize primarily, and then do fiddly changes in Plex (Plex doesn't alter the original files or their metadata directly, only in its own database), as well as playlists.