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submitted 3 days ago by Thoven@lemdro.id to c/opensource@lemmy.ml

My family hosts a modest Audiobookshelf server. When we tried to move from our old Plex server to ABS it was a nightmare. Our library had been built slowly over years and file organization/metadata was a mess. It took us several tools and many hours to get everything in decent shape. I was frustrated that nobody had made a single tool to scrub and clean up an audiobook library. So, I made one!

Notable features:

  • Fetch new metadata interactively from Audible or Goodreads
  • Generate metadata files
  • Recursively find and process files
  • Combine chapter files into a single book file
  • Convert files to .m4b

This is my first foray into an open source project. I know it's not pretty, and many of the features on my initial wishlist never got finished. But I have the core functionality working enough for my needs, which means I've been putting a lot less time into it. I decided to just release it to the world as is. May it save you much time!

The link

Ultimate Audiobooks is licensed under GPL-3.0

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[-] kuhore@lemmy.world 13 points 3 days ago

Good show old chap, I just finished painstakingly doing this manual for all my audiobooks. Would have been nice to have a tool like this. Thank for the work anyways.

[-] lemmylommy@lemmy.world 5 points 3 days ago

Same here. But I guess this will come in handy in the future. Thanks

[-] Albbi@lemmy.ca 7 points 3 days ago

Does StoryGraph offer anything that could be useful for this project? It's a competitor to Good Reads. I've been using it because I'm getting away from anything that Amazon touches.

[-] Thoven@lemdro.id 3 points 2 days ago

I use StoryGraph for my personal library management, but Goodreads simply has better coverage of both total books and specific metadata. But Audible is the best source anyway, as it has data specific to the audiobook other sources rarely do. I've included Goodreads mostly as a fallback for books Audible doesn't have listed. One of the roadmap items is to add other sources, like Google books. At that time I would consider a source separate from Amazon/Google if a quality one can be found and conveniently called/scraped.

[-] harsh3466@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

FWIW, they don't have an api. It's on their long term roadmap.

[-] ohulancutash@feddit.uk 3 points 3 days ago

Doesn’t audiobookshelf do all this already?

[-] Thoven@lemdro.id 7 points 3 days ago

It can do some metadata matching, but to my knowledge it doesn't do any of the big ticket items like combining chapter files

[-] Bldck@beehaw.org 2 points 3 days ago

Seems like an extension of Readarr (rest in peace) plus AudioBook Converter and ffmpeg for conversion?

Nice to have a tool with all of it in one place. I’d be concerned about the Goodreads API failing you like it did for Readarr. Then the backup metadata also failed

[-] Thoven@lemdro.id 1 points 2 days ago

Metadata is written to the file at the time of operation, so Goodreads failing would not affect any existing metadata sourced from it. But Audible is the preferred source anyway, as it has metadata specific to the audiobook typically not available in Goodreads. I've included it as a backup for books (mostly older ones) that are not available on Audible. Goodreads allows user submissions and thus has just about every book available in its library.

[-] railway692@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

For me, the struggle is the opposite: chapterizing older, single file audiobooks.

[-] Bldck@beehaw.org 1 points 3 days ago

You should be able to manage that with a .cue if you’re playing from Plex or AudioBookShelf. I think Jellyfin supports them too

[-] railway692@piefed.zip 1 points 3 days ago

It's manually identifying the timestamps that's tedious.

[-] Thoven@lemdro.id 2 points 2 days ago

I've never tried it, but my father tells me that if you use ABS and include the ASIN in the metadata there's a tool (possibly built in?) that can fetch chapter timestamps

[-] railway692@piefed.zip 1 points 2 days ago

That would be useful. I'll look for it.

[-] Bldck@beehaw.org 2 points 3 days ago

Yeah I’ve done it a handful of times. Not fun for longer books.

I found a few resources online that are repos of cue markers.

Might also be a good task for an LLM

this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2025
103 points (101.0% liked)

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