audio books in calibre

[shentar]

Oddly, I had this same idea today. So I tried it.

I used Add Books to add an mp3. It added OK (I had to use the All File filter in the add dialog to see it). The only problem was that the Author and Title fields were inverted - probably because of the directory structure it came from. I was able to add tags and a genre to it and move it between libraries. Double clicking on the entry fired up vlc to play it back.

So as far as I can see Calibre is almost there as an audiobook manager. AFAICS we would need two things (three if you don't want to copy the files into your Calibre library):

1. A filter in add-dialog to add audio file formats.
2. A way to associate multiple files as a single "book" (many audiobooks come as multiple mp3s)
3. An add-as-link option for adding files.

Item (1) should be trivial.
Item (3) would be, I think, trivial on linux but I have no idea how difficult it would be on windows (shortcuts do not really replace symbolic links).
Item (2) is the major problem. Effectively each audiobook would need to have something like a playlist associated with it. Working on the playlist - which could be autogenerated during the add-book operation or manually generated later - would apply the same operation to all files in the audiobook. This would include move/delete/tag/set genre. By default you would probably want to hide the individual part files (some of my audiobooks contain several hundred short mp3 files to cope with the problem of restarting part way through a book).

Thinking about it, rather than beat calibre into shape to do something it wasn't originally designed to do, I'd be quite happy to have another custom metadata field (like genre) which simply gave a path to an associated audio-book directory. Double clicking on the tag would open the file manager on that directory and after that I could proceed using my normal audio tools. Maybe that is something which could be added via a plug-in?

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by shentar

2. A way to associate multiple files as a single "book" (many audiobooks come as multiple mp3s)

You can already do this if you create a rar archive to hold all the files making up the audiobook.

However as audiobooks are so much larger than ebooks, I prefer to keep them separate to my ebook library.

[shentar]

Originally Posted by itimpi

You can already do this if you create a rar archive to hold all the files making up the audiobook.

However as audiobooks are so much larger than ebooks, I prefer to keep them separate to my ebook library.

True - I just tried this (using a zip file) and double clicking in calibre opens the archive from whence I can play the files. However, as you say this means that I would have to put large audiofiles into calibre which is undesirable.

So I created a vlc playlist, which is basically just an xml file, and added that to calibre. Double clicking fired up vlc for me and the .xspf file is small enough that I'm not too concerned about it being duplicated. For the sake of purity I would prefer it was a link - and I could probably arrange that manually on linux - but it is not a major issue.

So for me that is job done. I can now see from calibre whether I have an audio version of my book and even fire it up, but without having to duplicate the audio files which would normally reside in my squeezebox audio libraries.

Thanks itimpi for the nudge which gave me the facility I was looking for without me having to do any significant work!

[itimpi]

Originally Posted by shentar

Thanks itimpi for the nudge which gave me the facility I was looking for without me having to do any significant work!

No problem!

I might steal your idea of storing the playlist in Calibre As I keep all my audiobooks on a Drobo FS NAS box it should also work OK for me.

[Jesse Chisholm]

I uploaded a new version (0.6.62) of my audio book metadata reader program.
This handles M4B and M4A files pretty well. Also I restructured the code to be more modular.

see: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho....php?p=1667632

-Jesse

[Jesse Chisholm]

Per various requests, I've done an upgrade of the AudioBookReader plugin (v 1.0.77) which adds these features:

* : can also read .M3U playlist files
also: .M3U8, .PLS, .KPL, .RAM
as these have a sufficiently similar file format

* : individual files referenced by the .M3U file are parsed for metadata
and these are merged for the final metadata returned to calibre.

* : referenced .M3U files are NOT copied into the calibre DB
only the .M3U file is copied into the calibre DB

CAVEATS:
* : local files referenced in the .M3U file should have absolute paths.
since the .m3u file is copied, relative paths are broken.

* : on-line files referenced in the .M3U file will be temporarily
downloaded and copied so that metadata can be parsed from the file.

* : on-line files referenced in the .M3U file should use http: protocol.
the rtsp: protocol is for streaming. trying to download a stream
will never end (until your local hard disk is full).

I have pinged kiwidude, so the automatic pages will be updated in due process.

-Jesse

[Pinecone]

Now to add video file capability.

So I can store and tag and sort video files.

[Jesse Chisholm]

@Pinecone,
Well, ... technically, ... now that you mention it, ... you can already.
If you don't mind the caveats.

1: like MP3 files the MP4 and FLV files do not show up in the Add Files list unless you set the File Type filter to All Files.

2: like MP3 files the MP4 and FLV file will be copied into the Calibre Database.

So, if you don't mind the duplicate file in the file system, then go for it.

3: like MP3 files, MP4 files can be put into an M3U file.
[ the spec doesn't say so, but Media Player doesn't mind at all ]
Then you get the management without the duplication.
But you better not move / delete / rename the file, or the M3U is broken.

3.5: M3U files for Calibre use _must_ use absolute paths or URLs.

The reason this works is that many file formats use the same tagging structure internally. Many Audio Books formats are just special cases of Audio Video Files formats. (same structure but without the video stream).

The AudioBookReader plugin can actually read metadata from file four different file formats:
* MP3
* M4B, M4A, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, QT
* AA, AAX
* F4B, F4A, FLV
and three variations of the play list file format:
* M3U, M3U8, RAM
* PLS
* KPL.

-Jesse

[buster123]

Jesse - many thanks for all the hard work!

I just installed your plugin and the second book I tried to add seems to have broken the importer. The book - Atlas Shrugged - is huge consisting of 1208 mp3 files. I've attached the .m3u file (renamed .txt to meet this board's attachment criteria). Any ideas?

buster

[buster123]

Originally Posted by buster123

Jesse - many thanks for all the hard work!

I just installed your plugin and the second book I tried to add seems to have broken the importer.

buster

I was able to work around this and complete my audiobook to phone exporter. Thanks again for the plug-in

[Jesse Chisholm]

@buster123 - Glad you found a workaround.

I see from your mp3tag.txt file (the renamed mp3tag.m3u file) that your files are stored on a Windows style network drive: \\machine\share\path\file.mp3

Naturally, that is a use-case I did not test.

I'll need to set up such a network shared directory so I can test what happens in the code with this kind of path.

-Jesse

[buster123]

Originally Posted by Jesse Chisholm

@buster123 - Glad you found a workaround.

I'll need to set up such a network shared directory so I can test what happens in the code with this kind of path
-Jesse

The net drive works fine for 50 abooks in calibre to date. Atlas Shrugged was the only problem and in that case I just created an m3u from a single mp3 for calibre import and then replaced it in calibre's file location with a full m3u needed for playback locally and on my phone. Works great.

thanks again

[Jesse Chisholm]

@buster123:

I just created an m3u from a single mp3 for calibre import and then replaced it in calibre's file location with a full m3u needed for playback locally and on my phone. Works great.

Excellent!

Likely the metadata in the plethora of files for Atlas Shrugged is redundant anyway. The bulk of the unique information is all going to be in the first file.

Hmm. Perhaps I should see about an options GUI page for the aBook import to set default behavior to either scan all files or only one file in an m3u to get metadata. Hmm.
;-D

-Jesse

[polarwind]

@Jesse Chisholm: Installed Calibre on Win7 and added the MP3 meta data plugin. Created a playlist file for 35 mp3 files that represent an entire audiobook. Added the book in Calibre by pointing to the m3u file. Works ok.

What I can not figure out is if there is support for remembering the "last point of play" in a audiobook? A bookmark. Is there?

I also tested the CC Demo version, hoping to get access to my audiobook. But this does not seem to be working.

What I basically am looking for is a platform that can STREAM audiobooks, not downloading. Choice of client could be web or app. Can this be done?

[chaley]

First, note that you responded to a 4-year-old thread. You might consider asking the mods to make a new thread for it.

Originally Posted by polarwind

I also tested the CC Demo version, hoping to get access to my audiobook. But this does not seem to be working.

You would need to tell CC to accept MP3 files in CC's Settings / Formats and folders.

What I basically am looking for is a platform that can STREAM audiobooks, not downloading. Choice of client could be web or app. Can this be done?

CC will download, not stream.