[Support] Audiobookshelf

[advplyr]

Self-hosted audiobook and podcast server

 

Follow on GitHub and consider providing feedback and suggesting features.

 

Android app is in beta, help test it out and offer feedback. Get it here on the Google Play Store.

 

iOS app is available to early beta testers using Test Flight, join here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/wiic7QIW

Join the discussion: https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf-app/discussions/60

 

 

 

See Documentation for supported folder structure and metadata.

 

https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf

Edited March 10 by advplyr

[jimmy898]

Great idea! Right now I'm using Calibre also for audiobooks but a dedicated service it's missing, I'll follow this project

[thefirstmojo]

Hi

I have set up a Server but it rejectet al lot of my files.

"[2021-08-23T06:31:20.832Z] ERROR: Invalid file in root dir /audiobooks/Frank Schätzing - Der Schwarm (ungekürzt)/Track 310 .mp3"

That is a example error message. 

Is that because of any characters i shouldn't use? Dashes, brackets?

[advplyr]

12 hours ago, thefirstmojo said:

Hi

I have set up a Server but it rejectet al lot of my files.

"[2021-08-23T06:31:20.832Z] ERROR: Invalid file in root dir /audiobooks/Frank Schätzing - Der Schwarm (ungekürzt)/Track 310 .mp3"

That is a example error message. 

Is that because of any characters i shouldn't use? Dashes, brackets?

 

There was an error with the scanner that I just fixed. You can force update, then run the scan again (in settings), and it will add those missing audiobooks.

 

There is one issue with your file structure though. It won't be able to identify the author, so that directory, "Frank Schätzing - Der Schwarm (ungekürzt)", will be used as the title.

Often times the title and subtitle are separated by a " - " also, so I don't see an easy way to support that naming convention. The best way for now is to create a directory for each author.

Edited August 23, 2021 by advplyr

[thefirstmojo]

The fix did work. Tanks.

I have a second request. I am listening at fast speeds. Is it possible to get the speed up to 3 times? and more important for me is ist possible to save the last playback speed possebly in a cookie? it is tedious to set the speed back up every time you restart the playback. Maybe somting for the future.

Otherwise i am verry happy it looks realy promissing thanks for your Work.

[advplyr]

3x speed is impressive, even for the slowest narrator!

These updates are live. Playback rate picker goes up to 3x and playback rate is stored as a user settings. User settings will persist across devices.

Keep the suggestions coming.

[thefirstmojo]

Next thing i have is if you are scanning the library and a audiobook is already scanned it overlooks new coverpictures if you put one in after the first scan. I see no way to update the picture other than delete the database.

If you are putting in a picture with the edit menue i dont see it saved localy. So after i do a database reset ists gone ore is there a way to find it?

[advplyr]

6 hours ago, thefirstmojo said:

Next thing i have is if you are scanning the library and a audiobook is already scanned it overlooks new coverpictures if you put one in after the first scan. I see no way to update the picture other than delete the database.

 

This is fixed now. I just updated the scanner to update existing audiobooks. You could have also removed the one audiobook by clicking remove inside the edit modal and rescanning.

 

6 hours ago, thefirstmojo said:

If you are putting in a picture with the edit menue i dont see it saved localy. So after i do a database reset ists gone ore is there a way to find it?

 

They aren't saved locally yet. I have it set-up a metadata directory because I planned to have the covers saved locally, but I haven't decided the best way to approach it. I'm leaning towards having 2 settings for this; a) ability to opt-out completely, and b) option to store the cover in the same directory as your audiobook.

Either way, this will be supported sometime soon.

Edited August 24, 2021 by advplyr

[thefirstmojo]

For me doesn't work the sort by Author anymore. I sorts but i don't know for what. Also it is the same (first last) (last first). User creation workt by the Way. Nice addition.

[Snickers]

Hi, dumb question but how can i create a User and Password or what are the standard credentials? 

[advplyr]

9 hours ago, thefirstmojo said:

For me doesn't work the sort by Author anymore. I sorts but i don't know for what. Also it is the same (first last) (last first). User creation workt by the Way. Nice addition.

 

I did a big update to support sorting by first or last name. If you added your books before that update, then the new author properties are probably not set. I explained it in more detail on github: https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/issues/8.

You can use the new batch edit and change the author name on all of your books, save, then change them all back. That will fix it for you.

 

 

2 hours ago, Snickers said:

Hi, dumb question but how can i create a User and Password or what are the standard credentials? 

 

The initial login is "root" with an empty password. Once you are in you can set a password if you want on the account page.

[KinGSiZ3]

Hey first off all, i like it 😄

 

Second Question about Cover. Will he Scan for Cover online ?

 

Sorry for my bad Denglish

 

Greetz KingSiz3

[advplyr]

11 hours ago, KinGSiZ3 said:

Hey first off all, i like it 😄

 

Second Question about Cover. Will he Scan for Cover online ?

 

Sorry for my bad Denglish

 

Greetz KingSiz3

 

Yes it will scan OpenLibrary database for book covers

[gpatkinson]

Fantastic work and thanks so much for creating this! I'll check out your android app on my CalyxOS pixel, but I was also wondering ... are there any existing (maybe even paid) iPhone apps that would play nicely with the audiobookshelf?

[advplyr]

Not right now, I played around a bit with RSS feeds so your books could be used in podcast players, but it lost priority. We have discussions on new features, the design and everything else on github. Your feedback and help with anything from testing to design would be greatly appreciated!

[lutiana]

Wow, this is sweet! And exactly what I have been looking for!

 

Quick question, your docs say you have to have the Author as the top folder, but as <First> <Last>, all of mine are <Last>, <First>. I am guessing I have to rename all of them for this to work then? If so, have you considered tweaking it so that both could work?

[advplyr]

1 hour ago, lutiana said:

Wow, this is sweet! And exactly what I have been looking for!

 

Quick question, your docs say you have to have the Author as the top folder, but as <First> <Last>, all of mine are <Last>, <First>. I am guessing I have to rename all of them for this to work then? If so, have you considered tweaking it so that both could work?

 

I didn't realize that is what I put in the docs. Last, First should work fine. It should even work with multiple authors in Last, First format.

 

Let me know if you have trouble with that. The github issues page is where most of the discussion on features/bugs is happening right now. As well as github discussion page.

[jimmy898]

Hi @advplyr.

Thanks once again for the great app and his develpment.

Right now I have my audiobook's library in Calibre, it works pretty well even with my italian editions.

 

I'm struggling to find a way to embed metadata files into the files, unfortunately Calibre can't write the metadata from the .opf files into the ID3 MP3 tags.

This means no info in my audiobook player (besides Title and Artist) ....so sad!! Do you think this could be a feature? 

 

Thanks in advance.

 

 

[advplyr]

@jimmy898 How are your audiobooks organized right now? Do you keep each audiobook in a folder with the book title?

 

I put together an example directory structure https://www.audiobookshelf.org/docs#structure, which seems to be the standard for most. If you use that directory structure then audiobookshelf will be able to get the title, author, series, volume number, and some other info without needing any metadata set.

 

To your question though, yes I do plan on adding this feature. I have quite a few audiobooks with bad metadata info to where it would be much easier if I could just press a button in audiobookshelf to fix.

 

I just realized you mentioned opf file metadata. Right now ebooks are scanned into audiobookshelf, but metadata for those is not pulled in. This will also be a feature coming soon.

Edited October 18, 2021 by advplyr

[jimmy898]

1 hour ago, advplyr said:

@jimmy898 How are your audiobooks organized right now? Do you keep each audiobook in a folder with the book title?

 

I put together an example directory structure https://www.audiobookshelf.org/docs#structure, which seems to be the standard for most. If you use that directory structure then audiobookshelf will be able to get the title, author, series, volume number, and some other info without needing any metadata set.

 

To your question though, yes I do plan on adding this feature. I have quite a few audiobooks with bad metadata info to where it would be much easier if I could just press a button in audiobookshelf to fix.

 

I just realized you mentioned opf file metadata. Right now ebooks are scanned into audiobookshelf, but metadata for those is not pulled in. This will also be a feature coming soon.

My library follow the very same structure, is ready to go! 

 

Being able to apply the Metadata into the ID3 tags would be awsome, right now Calibre is a powefull tool in find the correct info among the web but when we talk about audiobooks there is no way to "export his knowledge". Bring his Embed Metadata tool in audiobookshelf would be a killing feature imho!

 

 

[lutiana]

I am finally getting around to implementing this. So far so good, but I am getting warnings like this in the log:

 

[Audiobook] Full cover path still not set "/s/book/kv4956i4/cover.jpg"

 

and this:

 

[Book] "The Valley of Horses" updating book cover to "/s/book/kv499okx/cover.png" but no full path was passed

 

What does that mean exactly? Is it something to be concerned about?

Edited October 23, 2021 by lutiana

[advplyr]

Can you check that you are running version v1.4.15

 

I made a lot of updates to covers last week

[lutiana]

43 minutes ago, advplyr said:

Can you check that you are running version v1.4.15

 

I made a lot of updates to covers last week

 

Yes, it's version 1.4.15.

 

 

[advplyr]

This could be a bug actually. Are any of your covers not loading?

[lutiana]

Also, there is something odd going on with the meta data retrieval. It looks like most of the book covers were grabbed fine, but none of the books have any data beyond that. No synopsis/author etc.

 

When I click edit to check on the metadata, the "Details" tab is mostly blank, and what it has seems to only be what was parsed from the local file name/path. The author is listed as <last,first> as well. If I click "rescan" it tells me that it was updated, but the meta data remains blank and it is also not re-scanning the ID3 data from the tracks either.

 

EDIT: For Clarity - I am going through the books, any flagged as having errors I am manually fixing. Most so far are just the track number meta data in the MP3 being wrong. So I am using mp3tag to just re-number them in order. But when I go to rescan the book, nothing changes. So I am wondering how I can get the changes made in the file to happen in the Audiobookshelf interface.

 

 

Edited October 23, 2021 by lutiana