books in emby

[sundevil67 21]

I'd be happy if there was just a way to catalog a collection of PDFs with thumbnails that can be downloaded or launched in a PDF reader. Am I doing something wrong because I'm seeing this?

[sundevil67 21]

On 10/19/2023 at 2:00 PM, Luke said:

It detects a few formats:

".pdf", ".epub", ".mobi", ".cbr", ".cbz", ".azw3"

But all you can do right now is browse, not play or read.

Whoops; looks like I double-posted & forgot I'd replied in another thread. My files are all PDF, but Emby doesn't recognize them to browse. I just get "no items detected".

[Luke 37090]

1 hour ago, sundevil67 said:

Whoops; looks like I double-posted & forgot I'd replied in another thread. My files are all PDF, but Emby doesn't recognize them to browse. I just get "no items detected".

HI there. How many emby libraries have you created, and what folder paths did you add to each one?

[sundevil67 21]

On 10/22/2023 at 3:09 PM, Luke said:

HI there. How many emby libraries have you created, and what folder paths did you add to each one?

There's one called "BooksTest" with 2 folders; one contains 2 PDFs, and another with 13. I also have another library pointing only to that same folder with the 13. The one with 2 PDFs isn't recognized at all, leaving the "no items found" message, but in the other, I do see folders, and can drill down to see the attached. I tried to download the file in iOS to show to some friends last night, but couldn't find where the file was saved (yep, that pesky old issue rears its ugly head again). I have 101 "Devices" but it looks like they each must be deleted individually, but I don't think I've ever been able to dig up a file I used the "Download to" function with.

I was however able to download the documents with the "Download" option from the ... menu. I suppose I can manually "identify" each folder & add a custom image to get thumbnails, but I'd still have to burrow into a folder to get to it & only actually have access when I am on my Macbook & can download/find the file. All I'm really after is an automatically generated thumbnail & the ability to launch the PDFs in the browser. It looks like others have been able to accomplish this - but maybe not on MacOS?

[Luke 37090]

Quote

There's one called "BooksTest" with 2 folders; one contains 2 PDFs, and another with 13. I also have another library pointing only to that same folder with the 13.

What are the content types of each library and the folder paths that are added to each one? Using the same folder in multiple libraries of varying content types is currently not supported.

[sundevil67 21]

On 10/29/2023 at 7:06 PM, Luke said:

What are the content types of each library and the folder paths that are added to each one? Using the same folder in multiple libraries of varying content types is currently not supported.

I'll isolate just the one folder in one library & see if that changes anything.

[sundevil67 21]

On 10/29/2023 at 7:06 PM, Luke said:

What are the content types of each library and the folder paths that are added to each one? Using the same folder in multiple libraries of varying content types is currently not supported.

Yeah, same thing - just shows the individual PDFs as folders

[Luke 37090]

What are the content types of each library and the folder paths that are added to each one?

[sundevil67 21]

3 minutes ago, Luke said:

What are the content types of each library and the folder paths that are added to each one?

Content type is "Books"

and the page looks like this - only one I have in there now; actually just created a new library called "Books" with just this one folder containing 2 PDFs

/Volumes/My Passport/Adam2/Satyriasis/Lyrics

[Luke 37090]

28 minutes ago, sundevil67 said:

Content type is "Books"

and the page looks like this - only one I have in there now; actually just created a new library called "Books" with just this one folder containing 2 PDFs

/Volumes/My Passport/Adam2/Satyriasis/Lyrics

That's the only library on the server?

[sundevil67 21]

6 hours ago, Luke said:

That's the only library on the server?

No, just the only library containing that particular folder/file.

[Luke 37090]

OK that's just the extent of book features right now, but more are planned for future updates. Thanks.

[KellyEmby 10]

I have found;

1) start with a small group of books and experiment to get what you want your library to look like;

2) if I provide the image Emby will usually pick it up and use it or I can add it in Emby using "Edit Images"; 

3) “Calibre” has been very helpful in providing many of the images for epub files (haven’t started pdfs yet), but I still have to search for some of them;

4) “Calibre” can also provide me with the “Metadata” for me to put into the “Overview”, but this is one at a time (this would be a nice place where Emby could help me, maybe using Calibre's opf file?);

5) now I can at least “see” what ebooks I have and can then download what I want to my devices to read;

6) I used Emby to organize my Audio book library and following a similar format for the ebooks.

Thank you for Emby!  I can now find and enjoy my media anywhere/everywhere.  It was horrible spending more time looking for something than enjoying it.

I did see the reference to “audiobookshelf” that is something I will have to look into when I have the time.

On 9/22/2023 at 10:03 AM, bkzland said:

That being said, audiobookshelf is a pretty good books and audiobooks platform.

https://www.audiobookshelf.org/

[Moldorm 0]

The day emby supports reading ebooks and comics, I will switch from plex to emby. I know that plex doesn't plan to add this feature, and I'm really happy that the emby team is working on it. I really hope this feature is comming soon!

[sundevil67 21]

Audiobooks always worked well; all I really want is to be able to download/access PDFs from any device vs. empty folders. Ah well. I suppose it's just something I can live without.

[tmysik 9]

Hi all, I spent some time with fighting against .NET and Windows (I am a Java guy :) and created a prototype of Emby plugin for EPUB books. It provides really just a basic functionality - the advantage of EPUB is that it typically contains all the metadata (title, author, cover, description, year, etc.) so no need to connect remotely anywhere (yes, this part could be possibly improved, but very likely not by me :).

So, what it does exactly:

• it updates Emby metadata on library item addition
• it does the same also when one likes/unlikes the given book (to be able to manually trigger metadata refresh; this could be possibly removed, I have used this a lot during my testing)
• instead of collections, it adds tags to the books (see the last image); this is to avoid mixing movie collections with the book ones, I did not like that, it seems to me that collections are more movie friendly... this also requires proper naming of the EPUB files - personally, I am using form of "<series><index>.<title>.epub" - this way, all the files are always properly sorted, even in my ordinary file manager (I use file name sorting also in my e-book reader, too). So, the same sorting is applied also in Emby.

(That is all, so no reading or so; I have an e-book reader so I use it, of course.)

However, there are some possibly problematic parts, like - I am using an EPUB library, which is free to use, but I was not able to "bundle" it correctly into my plugin (so I simply copied its sources into my project - ugly, but works, but I may be violating its license, I don't know; any hints how to do it properly are welcome, thanks). Also, the code is very ugly (using VS and Windows is more a fight for me, as I wrote :) so it is not published anywhere.

BTW, it should not be difficult to add support for e.g. MOBI books there (I guess they are similar to EPUBs, no? I mean, they could contain all the book metadata too, no?), although it would mean some more code cleanup and refactoring, but nothing complicated I believe.

Would anyone be interested in this plugin? If so, I could try to prepare a public GitHub repo, but it would take me some time to prepare it (the reasons are explained above).

This is how it looks like on my Emby instance:

[OlivetIsa 19]

@tmysikit really look nice you should make a GitHub public release I think many Emby users would be interested.

[jashwa 7]

On 12/31/2022 at 4:00 PM, Luke said:

The most realistic option I think launching the file with the host OS and using whatever your installed book reader is.

This feels like a relatively simple thing to implement, no? I feel like adding adding a play button that just downloads and tries to open the file in the default reader of the OS would be reasonable for non-web clients, at least iOS and Android.

[Luke 37090]

3 hours ago, jashwa said:

This feels like a relatively simple thing to implement, no? I feel like adding adding a play button that just downloads and tries to open the file in the default reader of the OS would be reasonable for non-web clients, at least iOS and Android.

Yes it makes sense.

[shenmu99 0]

On 12/7/2023 at 4:25 PM, tmysik said:

大家好，我花了一些时间与 .NET 和 Windows 作斗争（我是一个 Java 人:），并为 EPUB 书籍创建了 Emby 插件的原型。它实际上只提供了一个基本功能 - EPUB 的优点是它通常包含所有元数据（标题、作者、封面、描述、年份等），因此无需在任何地方远程连接（是的，这部分可以改进） ，但很可能不是我做的。

那么，它到底做了什么：

• 它更新了有关库项目添加的 Emby 元数据
• 当一个人喜欢/不喜欢给定的书时，它也会做同样的事情（能够手动触发元数据刷新；这可能会被删除，我在测试过程中经常使用它）
• 它不是收藏，而是为书籍添加标签（参见最后一张图片）；这是为了避免将电影收藏与书籍混合，我不喜欢这样，在我看来，收藏对电影更友好......这也需要正确命名 EPUB 文件 - 就我个人而言，我使用“<”的形式series><index>.<title>.epub” - 这样，所有文件总是正确排序，即使在我的普通文件管理器中也是如此（我也在我的电子书阅读器中使用文件名排序）。因此，同样的排序也适用于 Emby。

（仅此而已，所以没有阅读什么的；我有一个电子书阅读器，所以我当然使用它。）

然而，有一些可能有问题的部分，比如 - 我正在使用 EPUB 库，它是免费使用的，但我无法将它正确地“捆绑”到我的插件中（所以我只是将其源代码复制到我的项目中 - 丑陋，但是有效，但我可能违反了它的许可证，我不知道；欢迎任何如何正确执行此操作的提示，谢谢）。另外，代码非常丑陋（使用 VS 和 Windows 对我来说更像是一场战斗，正如我所写的：）所以它没有在任何地方发布。

顺便说一句，在那里添加对例如 MOBI 书籍的支持应该不难（我猜它们类似于 EPUB，不是吗？我的意思是，它们也可以包含所有书籍元数据，不是吗？），尽管这意味着更多的代码清理和重构，但我相信没什么复杂的。

有人对这个插件感兴趣吗？如果是这样，我可以尝试准备一个公共 GitHub 存储库，但需要一些时间来准备（原因如上所述）。

这是我的 Emby 实例上的样子：

@tmysik  Very much looking forward to your production release github

Edited December 24, 2023 by shenmu99

[Dibbes 431]

On 12/7/2023 at 9:25 AM, tmysik said:

Would anyone be interested in this plugin? If so, I could try to prepare a public GitHub repo, but it would take me some time to prepare it (the reasons are explained above).

Definitely interested!!!!

[ElizaSpencer 0]

I was going to add as a requested feature, but there are 300 pages of them. I couldn't easily see a search. The book function would be most useful. Ideal for a third party plugin - just point the db record at the users already installed book reader. Let the user edit the page image so no scrapy scrapy. Kiss. Nice product. Looks similar to Jellyfin, which was buggy. Best interface over the likes of Kodi, as you allow the user to manage their own fs. 10/10

[Moldorm 0]

On 11/2/2023 at 9:22 PM, Luke said:

OK that's just the extent of book features right now, but more are planned for future updates. Thanks.

Any news? 

[Luke 37090]

4 hours ago, Moldorm said:

Any news? 

HI, not yet, sorry.