[Metadata Reader Plugin] Read MP3 audio book metadata

[Jesse Chisholm]

@Wyndam, no apology needed. Hobbies should always take back seat to health, job and chores.

re: Series order style.
What I do, sadly requires manually adjusting the Series order numbers, because I haven't figured a way to automate this yet.
For example, your Saxon Stories, I do this way:

Saxon Stories [1] ...
Saxon Stories [2.1] ...
Saxon Stories [2.2] ...
Saxon Stories [2.3] ...
Saxon Stories [3] ...
Saxon Stories [4] ...

That keeps the parts in order, and keeps the book numbers proper as well.

I'll dig into the clip you sent and see if I can learn why it isn't getting the tags properly.

-Jesse

[Jesse Chisholm]

@Wyndam
re: Lords of the North
The clip you sent is a .WAV file, which my meta data reader does not know how to handle RIFF metadata.
I am not sure how much metadata is in a WAV file (The RIFF INFO block, mostly), but if there is enough, I'll see if I can pull it out in a future version of the plugin.

From your screen shots, I see the original is in M4B format, which my plugin _should_ handle. ( Though I am unsure if it can handle a DRMed M4B file. I've never tried )

re: my option 2 and 2.5
Yes, in #2 I was suggesting converting the MP3 collection into either a single huge MP3 file or a single M4A file after converting the audio to AAC. Since you have an M4B collection, it would just mean glomming them into a single huge file, with whatever internal adjustments were needed.

You mentioned the issues with "single huge files" on a mobile platform. I find similar issues on my PC. I really don't want to go there.

Option #2.5 is similar, in that it makes a single huge file (already compressed audio doesn't compress well into a ZIP). No audio data conversion is needed. But listening to the files is problematic. Also I can't get the metadata out of these ZIPped files, so it is kind of pointless. I really don't want to go there either.

re: copy the files into Calibre even though I don't listen to them there
Yes, the whole "copy" is problematic. Yet not copying them is also problematic.

There is an option #4, which is not automatic at this time, but very manual.

• Make a small HTML file that describes and links to the audio files stored elsewhere on your system (or on the web).
• Name that file so the Calibre file name default parsing gets something useful for metadata.
• Add that file to Calibre. (possibly as an additional format for an existing book)
• Manually correct the metadata.

BENEFITS:

• The file in Calibre is small (audio is not copied)
• It can be stored in Calibre along side the EBUB or other text format of the file
• Clicking the link to an audio file _should_ bring up your system's player for that file.

DRAWBACKS:

• Calibre knows nothing about the actual audio files.
• Calibre, therefore, will NOT copy the audio files to your mobile device when it copies the HTML file to your device.
• This method, therefore, is only useful on your main PC. (if at all).

-Jesse

[Wyndham]

Hi Jesse,

I can email you the m4b, or put it somewhere on the www. DropBox perhaps? Just let me know.

As I have to store the AudioBooks somewhere on my PC, it might as well be Calibre; so the extra effort in the other steps you suggested doesn't appeal to me.

I have found that it really doesn't matter how I set the series information, as this is not visible in iTunes anyway (as far as I can see), so is only of use in Calibre where it keeps the AudioBooks and parts together.

I also find that, perhaps my own mistyping, after copying AudioBooks into iTunes, I usually have to amend the Album name so that the parts of the AudioBook come together as one (and shows as the "Book") - screenshot illustrates.

[Trixter]

I'd love to see this plugin be able to tag audiobooks as well as read tags from them.

It should be possible... maybe merge with something like mutagen perhaps?

as for the tracks issue I got around it by adding the custom fields track & tracks.
Then Calibre works just like normal pulling the data and filling everything except the track data.
I dont code python so I still add track data manually but I'm sure it's possible to automate this by pointing the plugin to the custom fields instead of series_index, series sorting works great and book numbers are correct this way.

Sent you a PM explaining in more detail what im talking about.

[thatworkshop]

Have been away for almost 1 year now!

Not sure if this makes any sense to you guys, but I'd like all the mp3's of an audiobook to occupy just one entry in Calibre. As one can add multiple epub, mobi and pdf for 1 book in Edit metadata, I'd like to add multiple mp3's but when doing that it replaces the previous mp3. Is this done on purpose, and if so, would you be willing to consider this alternative? Thanks.

[dAhc]

Originally Posted by idoit

Have been away for almost 1 year now!

Not sure if this makes any sense to you guys, but I'd like all the mp3's of an audiobook to occupy just one entry in Calibre. As one can add multiple epub, mobi and pdf for 1 book in Edit metadata, I'd like to add multiple mp3's but when doing that it replaces the previous mp3. Is this done on purpose, and if so, would you be willing to consider this alternative? Thanks.

Have you found a solution for this?

[herba]

Hi, new to Calibre and have just started using it to show me my library/catalog of audio books. I find that when I use ADD BOOKS and point it to my MP3's of audio books, a second copy of the MP3 is made in my CALIBRE folder. Is there a way to keep this from happening as I'd like to keep my book collection in the original location? If not I can simply index them all and delete from the original location, using Calibre's going forward.

Thanks for any info.

Herb

[Jesse Chisholm]

@herba, try making a PLAYLIST of your files (an .m3u file), and adding that to calibre instead.

If I've done things right, then it will only add the .m3u file to the calibre library and leave your actual .mp3 files in your original location. It should extract metadata from all files in your playlist to decorate the playlist file in calibre.

CAVEATS:
* don't ever move the audio files. (or delete them)
* don't point your playlist to audio files that might disappear out of your control.
* don't point your playlist to live audio streams.

The plug-in needs to scan the audio file to get metadata information. A stream (of, say, radio) goes forever, and that isn't too useful.

[laji]

Thank you for your plugin; it really will be useful. Unfortunately, my story is same, as gaseous': does not work. Tried 3 files, mp3, all tags, tracknumber too, tried id3v1, id3v2.3 UTF-16, 2.4 UTF-8 - no response. What can I do? Thank you in advance.

[kenmac999]

Jesse, thanks for the great plug-in. It's helped me automate keeping a list of my audio-books. I have found it works best by having a separate library to import my audio books into after massaging their metadata with puddletag. I then use the view manager plugin to list the first in each "series" & then create a catalog.

[Bansteatt84]

Can you add multiple audiobooks foldersthat are in folders because they contain chapters of books. When I select the option in adding multiple books from file directory you cannot change the file type (it just lists "books")... Is there and easy way to import all audio books? I easily imported multiple audio books that werent chaptered so they werent in different folders...BUT I have many chaptered and I was wondering if I could somehow import them all at once?

[PeterT]

I think the issue is this plugin has not been updated for a long time and I doubt it is calibre 5 / Python 3 compatible.

[kenmac999]

Originally Posted by buffygurl

hello
i am trying to install this on portable
... can anybody help
thanks
Cerina

You will need to roll back to calibre version 4.23.0 until someone steps up to update it to work with calibre >4.99 (python3)

Ken

[Bozana]

Here's the error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "calibre\gui2\dialogs\plugin_updater.py", line 709, in _install_clicked
File "calibre\customize\ui.py", line 479, in add_plugin
File "calibre\customize\ui.py", line 64, in load_plugin
File "calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 307, in load
File "importlib\__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1050, in _gcd_import
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1027, in _find_and_load
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 1006, in _find_and_load_unlocked
File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 688, in _load_unlocked
File "calibre\customize\zipplugin.py", line 206, in exec_module
File "calibre_plugins.audiobookmetadatareader.__init__" , line 8, in <module>
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'common'

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Bozana

Here's the error: ...

See the three previous posts before yours.