ComicRack for comics, Calibre for books...?

[guyanonymous]

I've been happily using Calibre for organizing my books for a while now. I've also been using it to organize my comic books - but was frustrated by a few aspects that are more unique to the comic book world.

While looking for a better cbr/cbz reader to replace Comical, I stumbled on ComicRack, which, in my view, is to comic books what Calibre is (organization-wise) to general books.

That got me thinking about ways to organize RPG materials as well...and everything else.

I've been a user of eXtreme Movie Manager, what I've found to work best for organizing my movies.

I've yet to find anything I've been happy with for my photos.

What I'm wondering is what other programs people use for organizing media and information (even types other than mentioned in this post)?

I've been experimenting with Songbird for music (I don't like iTunes at all), and think it'll do the job. Any other music organization programs I should check into? I prefer open-source where possible...but I'm open to options.

Thoughts?

[ghostyjack]

I've been using comicrack since the beginning and it's damn good for comics, and songbird is pretty good for music.

What I'd be interested in is an audiobook manager as there doesn't seem to be one of these that I've been able to find yet.

[guyanonymous]

I've never gotten into audiobooks - what special requirements do they have beyond normal audio files? (for organization)?

[raiderkilo]

Combo calibre + comicrack is good

[ghostyjack]

Originally Posted by guyanonymous

I've never gotten into audiobooks - what special requirements do they have beyond normal audio files? (for organization)?

As audiobooks are normally spoken versions of the books (there can also be adaptations that can fall in this catagory that do not follow the books word-for-word), they can be categorised is a similar way to ebooks (e.g. author, series, book X of Y, etc) but will also need metadata about the audio file. In a nut-shell, it's a combination of books and audio file information.

Also if the audiobook manager is capable of playing them back, then they would need the ability to bookmark the played audiobook file, so you can return to that point and continue listening.

I've recently found a plug-in for Songbird that gives bookmarking so, it's possible to use the metadata tags in my audiobook files to create the organisation I need but it is a bit messy. It would be better with a dedicated audiobook manager or a manager plugin for songbird that understands how to organise audiobooks.

[guyanonymous]

Bookmarking - that resonates with me. I'd actually love that for movies I watch, and can see it being even more useful for audiobooks (which you listen to over a much longer time period).

[ghostyjack]

Bookmarking for movies, now that could be quite useful. Unfortunatly, I don't know of any software that does that.

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by ghostyjack

As audiobooks are normally spoken versions of the books (there can also be adaptations that can fall in this catagory that do not follow the books word-for-word), they can be categorised is a similar way to ebooks (e.g. author, series, book X of Y, etc) but will also need metadata about the audio file. In a nut-shell, it's a combination of books and audio file information.

Also if the audiobook manager is capable of playing them back, then they would need the ability to bookmark the played audiobook file, so you can return to that point and continue listening.

iTunes would seem the obvious answer.

[ghostyjack]

I didn't realise iTunes properly understood audiobooks, I might just have to have a look at it.

[chouchenn]

Bookmarking for movies can be done with XMBC synchronised with a database.

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by chouchenn

Bookmarking for movies can be done with XMBC synchronised with a database.

Or you can rip it to VHS, where bookmarking comes naturally!

[taosaur]

But given that the thread is already shambling and moaning and I like the topic...

I've never been satisfied with ComicRack. I've tried to set it up a few times, and still have it installed, but all library operations are reeeeeeaaally slow and the program is prone to crashing on my aging but not exactly underpowered system (quad core, 8GB RAM, SSD).

Now that there's finally a ComicVine metadata scraper for Calibre (thanks to chewt0y), I'm futzing with setting up a separate Calibre library for my comics, then syncing via Calibre Companion for Android. My new purchases these days are mostly via Comixology on Android, though.

A lot of my other media is streaming or otherwise cloud-based. Even music I have stored locally, I mostly access via Google Play Music. My local video is indexed in XBMC, but I more often watch Netflix.