Audiobook Player Thread
#1
I am curious what people are playing audiobooks on with their Pinephones, I think the defining trait of an audiobook player is that it saves your postion in the 'book' between listening sessions; bookmarks, skipping << < > >> controls, and playlists are important too as is playing most all formats.
I feel like a podcast player would be yet another category aside from music and audiobooks with much emphasis on browsing, auto-downloading, and organizing played/unplayed podcasts after reviewing gnome podcasts.
I consider an audiobook player to be a daily driver essential as I prefer books to music when driving long distances.
On my N900 I ran the simple but effective Panucci which is FOSS, I have not had a chance to try to compile for Mobian.
https://github.com/gpodder/panucci
Panucci works well but only plays MP3 files, it also will wipe progress if I try to run the app without the current media found.

What do you recommend to play audiobooks on your pinephone?
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#2
(06-26-2021, 03:10 PM)biketool Wrote: I am curious what people are playing audiobooks on with their Pinephones, I think the defining trait of an audiobook player is that it saves your postion in the 'book' between listening sessions; bookmarks, skipping << < > >> controls, and playlists are important too as is playing most all formats.
I feel like a podcast player would be yet another category aside from music and audiobooks with much emphasis on browsing, auto-downloading, and organizing played/unplayed podcasts after reviewing gnome podcasts.
I consider an audiobook player to be a daily driver essential as I prefer books to music when driving long distances.
On my N900 I ran the simple but effective Panucci which is FOSS, I have not had a chance to try to compile for Mobian.
https://github.com/gpodder/panucci
Panucci works well but only plays MP3 files, it also will wipe progress if I try to run the app without the current media found.

What do you recommend to play audiobooks on your pinephone?
This is a Python2 scripted app, is python2 in the Mobian repos working?
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#3
I got flatpak installed and grabbed Cozy
https://itsfoss.com/cozy-audiobook-player/

Now I need to figure out scaling as it is unusable for now.(fixed below)
I did install it on my laptop though, I feel like the over-automated nature similar to modern music players auto-scanning the designated music or audiobook directories and no easy option for making a manual playlist hand chosen from files or directories is not welcome.  I think that kind of UI is probably common for Android, Win, and Apple devices but is not in keeping in with the hackable flexibility most of us expect from Linux apps.
(edit)
I did
Code:
scale-to-fit com.github.geigi.cozy on
Not great, it is now way too small, but at least I can now see Cozy's whole UI
Maybe toggling the scale-to-fit back off once I feel happy with the settings or have a book loaded.
I wish COzy had short and long skip forward and back buttons as well as a bookmark button, the UI is overly minimized.
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#4
You could try Rockbox, it supports bookmarking and multiple formats, you can even build it on the Pinephone itself.
Rockbox Pinephone thread.  
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#5
(08-06-2021, 04:27 PM)c3l@ Wrote: You could try Rockbox, it supports bookmarking and multiple formats, you can even build it on the Pinephone itself.
Rockbox Pinephone thread.  

I will give it a try, though I tried it out a few years ago on the N900 in app mode.
I recall rockbox being non-standard to the dark, simple, low power Maemo5 UI design which I LOVE, (please Maemo-Leste  get moving and fork what you need from Mobian so I can start using my beloved UI again)!!!
I sometimes feel that the reason I still daily drive my N900 is not just battery issues but the love for the UI and app design and feature philosophy preferred by default in Maemo Garage.
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#6
I should report that the changes made on mobian curated apps has greatly improved the experience of using Cozy. It is not perfect, you can't hand-edit playlists; it is automated beyond designating your audio book directory, and it organizes not by title but by author and reader. If there were options to hand edit auto-generated playlists, being to move the 'slider' for long audio files to skip to where is required would be nice too.
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#7
I'm very interested in audiobook software as well. I know there are a lot of DRM-free audiobooks available now from Google, so maybe that could help since Linux has issues with DRM.

I guess since the Pinephone is basically very similar to a desktop OS, you might also be able to access eAudiobook providers from your local library through a browser window on the phone, although I haven't tried this.
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#8
(05-31-2022, 04:22 PM)MarsColonist Wrote: I'm very interested in audiobook software as well.  I know there are a lot of DRM-free audiobooks available now from Google, so maybe that could help since Linux has issues with DRM.

I guess since the Pinephone is basically very similar to a desktop OS, you might also be able to access eAudiobook providers from your local library through a browser window on the phone, although I haven't tried this.

The starting point for most distros is a desktop OS like Debian or Alpine Linux.  For example Debian has the Mobian side project but I think the intent is to eventually have a singular OS that works properly in more than desktop/laptop, server, and embedded linux formats and can do tablets, TVs, and phones.

A good place to find audiobooks is using a Yourtube passthrough like Invidious https://invidious.io/ and/or a youtube downloder.  I have found many books especially unofficially translated works converted with text-to-speech to something you could run in an audiobook player.  I feel like audiobookbay.se might be in compliance with Swedish laws but probably not the rest of the world.  Also Gutenberg and internet archive is stuffed with freely downloadable and playable DRM free media.  An argument could be made that once you have a DRM copy you have a use license and could legally acquire a non-DRM backup copy for compatibility, I would not want to have to initiate a lawsuit against the content producers to affirm this interpretation in court though.

I am using Cozy now for several months and for the most part, except that there is no seek or exact time skip input, I like the app.  But it really needs an easier way to get around in an audio book than skipping by 120seconds maximum forward jumps, give me a slider or a way to input time into a file or a whole book in the mobile optomized app.  Now if I send a general command to fit all apps to thew screen I DO get my fast-seek slider but now text is microscopic on most apps, but I can use more desktop apps, tradeoffs.
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