Enhancement: Requesting support for chapters

[advplyr]

Enhancement: Requesting support for chapters

[Kudjo-Grand]

Looks like the chapter logic might need a little tweak.

I have multiple books in the "Mistborn Series" 'Book'. (I had it organized this way before I found your application and will consider changing it later).

However, the chapters detected are each entire book, instead of the chapters for EACH book file.

Here is the file structure on disk:

And how it appears in AudioBookShelf:

[advplyr]

I've been looking into this because I thought it would be useful to be able to look at and skip to chapters from the audiobook player. I think this is an important feature, and for the downloader to merge audio files into an m4b with chapters shouldn't be a problem.

Some audiobooks have multiple introductions or even interludes between chapters. In these cases I think it will be useful to add a field in the track editor where you can name the chapter yourself.

By default they would be named:

Chapter 1
Chatper 2
etc..

But you may want to name them like

Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1
etc..

For audiobooks that already have chapters named, the player would use those names. Maybe in the future editing already made M4B audiobooks could be possible as well.

Great suggestion! I'm thrilled that this is providing value for you.

[advplyr]

The first version of chapter support is live in v1.1.1

When the audiobook is scanned it attempts to get chapters from the file. If no chapters are found and the audiobook has multiple tracks then chapters will be created using the tracks.

If an audiobook has chapters you can jump to each chapter from the player. This chapters icon will be available:

As for your original request, the downloader has been changed to instead generate M4B audiofiles with embedded cover art, metadata, and chapters.

As of v1.1.0 updated files and new files are automatically scanned. So you could trigger a scan by renaming an audio file, or you could remove the audiobook and press scan. This will generate the chapters.

[Kudjo-Grand]

Tried to test this, but while the new chapter icon was present, it wouldn't allow me to click it. I tried multiple books and multiple browsers with no luck.

Please advise.

[advplyr]

The icon becomes clickable only if there are chapters. If you open the edit modal there is a chapters tab now, you can also view them there.
You need to update the audiobook files or remove the audiobook and press scan to have the chapters get set. Chapters are set during the scan.

[advplyr]

If you have a lot of details you don't want to lose, just rename 1 file in the directory and it will auto-scan again since it detected an update.

[Kudjo-Grand]

Okay. I'll try that and report back.

[advplyr]

The chapter scanner originally only used embedded chapters if the audiobook consisted of a single file. For multi-files it used the start of each file as a chapter.
I updated it to use embedded chapters if they are found and fallback to using the file start time as a chapter.

If you re-scan that audiobook and check the chapters tab, it should show the correct chapters now. v1.1.8