Ebook Metadata (late 2017 Status)

[mtjj 31]

So, I've tried reading old threads about this, but I can't tell what is working now and what is not, a lot of them refer to a bookshelf plugin that seems to be no longer available? Or at least I can't find it. Hoping someone can tell me what's what :-)

 

Is there any way to get metadata from a local file to display with books? Author, publisher, series, etc. I understand there is no way to scrape metadata as we don't have a source available* but I'm happy to put the data in manually if necessary. Not looking for anything special, just a way to browse by Author / Genre / tag / whatever as is the case with movies and TV.

 

Or is this something that is no longer possible?

 

*I think the librarything API might work for book metadata - see https://www.librarything.com/services/ but I am not a developer so I can't be certain. There is a limit of 1,000 calls per day, so probably individual users would need to sign up for an API key, but it seems to have calls for the basics - send an ISBN or name and get back book ("work") details. But I know books are low priority so I'm not expecting this anytime soon :-)

[fbrassin 46]

This is a question a wanted to ask too.

I tried last week but didn't find a solution.

 

Moreover, is there a way to read book directly in emby?

[mtjj 31]

I'm guessing from the lack of response that the answer is "this is not possible, and nobody cares"? :-)

[Luke 39844]

It's a great idea for a future update, thanks.

[mtjj 31]

Thanks Luke, as I said in the original post, just being able to access and browse metadata from files would be a great starting point, the auto scraping can come later :-)

[StrykeCC 0]

When the Time comes i'd be happy to test this out. Calibre has always provided metadata.opf  or <title>.OPF files with all the book metadata I look for. 

Its a uniform format, preset fields, XML, and always present. 

[SomethinLikeDis 0]

I would Like to have a plugin that refreshes the metadata. The audiobook files I have are normally sorted by chapter and now that emby remembers where I exited the book (tips hat) I combine all the chapters into a single file using mp3wrap.  However that program messes with all the metadata and I can go in and change the title back but there is not way to make it appear like it should in the library

Edited January 20, 2018 by SomethinLikeDis

[Twistedcloud 7]

Has there been any update on getting the book plugin to read Opf/xml files? I was able to fidn the following link that seems to say it should be able to red opf files and xml files but not sure if it is working yet or not. I have a lot of Comic books with XML metadata and e-books with opf data.

 

https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Plugins

[Luke 39844]

We have not progressed any further with this yet. It is something we're interested in for the future. Thanks.

[mtjj 31]

(Respectful) bump of this... as it seems there's a big new version coming soon with enhancements (thank you!), any chance of tackling ebooks in the following version?

 

As I say above, just adding metadata to filter / search would be a huge improvement (it would allow adding a calibre library to emby, currently, because of the calibre directory structure, this is a pain for browsing). Second on the list would be some kind of cross-compatibility with calibre opf files (which seem to be the de-facto standard), and xml for comics (not sure what the standard is as I don't read a lot of comics). 

[Luke 39844]

It's possible, and we're going as fast as we can, but this is still a little outside of our core focus areas, for now at least. Thanks.

[metaman 4]

(Respectful) bump of this... as it seems there's a big new version coming soon with enhancements (thank you!), any chance of tackling ebooks in the following version?

 

As I say above, just adding metadata to filter / search would be a huge improvement (it would allow adding a calibre library to emby, currently, because of the calibre directory structure, this is a pain for browsing). Second on the list would be some kind of cross-compatibility with calibre opf files (which seem to be the de-facto standard), and xml for comics (not sure what the standard is as I don't read a lot of comics). 

 

Just logging in to check things out again. Calibre-Web is a nice-ish solution built on top of the metadata.db, but of course, it is infinitely more desirable if all our media could be covered under one umbrella, like Emby(or the competitor). I am sure, one day, it will come, but when is rather the question. 

[Luke 39844]

We're going as fast as we can. We try to make time for things like books when we are able to. Thanks.

[Twistedcloud 7]

Any Chance you could allow Emby to save Metadata into the local folder (either as NFO or MySQL file), until you get some time to work on the book section?

 

I had a bunch of custom metadata for Comics, and Ebooks set up in Emby that was all removed when I upgraded to 4.0 (My Movies, Music, TVshows were all fine since it all had local files).

 

If this isn't possible, can you at least make it so multipole Genres/Tags can be added at once? All my Comic/Ebook files have metadata that Emby can't read (at this time) so coping it over would be simple but having to type out every single Genre and Tag for each file is really time consuming rather then just coping the sting and pasting it in (goes from 10 seconds a file to 45 secounds to 1 minute per file if not longer)

 

An example would be if I Copied: Horror, Crime, Mystery into the Genres it would add each as a separate Genre, rather then typing one out saving, doing the next saving again and adding the last one.

[Luke 39844]

We don't have a local metadata format decided on yet, so that would require some work. For example we could use nfo, but i think there are already some well known metadata formats for books that we could use.

[Luke 39844]

But we don't want to do anything quick and temporary because then we'll end up being stuck with it forever. Better to just get it right the first time.

[Anthony Reinking 6]

Please look at LazyLibrarian as well as Calibre during your decision making process.

I believe LL stores the info in a OPF file, and covers in a JPG.