retroLV, another LV-inspired side project

Isana · Post by **Isana** » April 14th, 2015, 7:33 pm

Hi everyone. I'm sharing another of my LV-inspired side projects. It's called retroLV (retro-el-vee):

https://karikarito.com/retrolv

It is a portal to LibriVox audiobooks. All the data used on the site comes from the Internet Archive (IA), and so does the look of the interface. I designed it to be simple while providing essential information about the audiobooks.

There are still some things I want to improve, but I think the core functionality is there. At some point I also want to be able to search for individual entries in a collection.

It is not important to read the following notes I will write, but I'll put them here anyway so you know what's going on.

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About the audiobook details page:

Files on this page are dynamically generated using data from the IA when the user clicks on a link, so when files appear on the IA details page (CD cover, M4B, etc.) they also appear on this page.
None of the files linked to are kept on my server; all the links are direct links to files or streams on the IA.
The audiobook description on the details page is the one returned by IA when I do a query. I keep these descriptions in a database. Some of the descriptions returned by IA retain their original formatting, particularly the line breaks. In this case, I use them to make real paragraphs. But some of the returned descriptions do not retain their original formatting. In this case, I leave it alone and the description text appears as a blob.

About the audiobook database and the search algorithm:

The retroLV app has its own database file of LV audiobooks, generated from the IA LV catalog.
This database is used by the app's search algorithm, written by me.
The database is automatically updated every three hours.
When a search is done for specific readers, the search returns a non-empty result only when the readers are mentioned in descriptions. This is because I am using IA data.
There are no genres (because, IA), but the subjects (which I call tags) are kept and used in the search algorithm.

No ads, no JavaScript. Small screens okay.

Post by **annise** » April 14th, 2015, 8:25 pm

Neat - and it does update promptly

I made an M4B for Submarine Boys and the Middies and it appeared immediately after Archive said the upload finished

I still haven't had time to add the links to the LV page

Anne

Isana · Post by **Isana** » April 14th, 2015, 8:40 pm

Thanks, Anne. I keep an eye out for M4B files because it's what I prefer to download. Is M4B generation still done here? I seem to have a hazy impression that IA does it now.

Post by **annise** » April 14th, 2015, 9:15 pm

No we still have to do it by hand. It isn't done till after the covers - we use the image. IA came up with a plan this year so we could add them to the project pages by adding _librivox to their name but before that we had to keep them separate - IA derived them always and made an extra set of mp3 files, so the zip file had 2 sets. I couldn't promise you would be able to find even links on all the Archive pages - M4Bs have come a long way from someone posting a few they made for themselves and wanted to share.

Anne

Isana · Post by **Isana** » April 14th, 2015, 11:40 pm

Ah, I see, thank you for explaining that. I think I might have started imagining things because I thought the M4B production thread has been quiet. I really like the M4B pages on the wiki because of the thumbnails of the cover art. I much prefer the way the cover art are displayed there over the new IA interface.

Post by **annise** » April 15th, 2015, 2:24 am

I really like the M4B pages on the wiki because of the thumbnails of the cover art.

Thank you

As the numbers grew it became more difficult to use and with our new system the links are actually part of the database which is a big step forward. So I'm sad to see it wind down, but I think the change was a step forward.

Anne

kayray · Post by **kayray** » April 15th, 2015, 9:37 am

So nice and clean!

Isana · Post by **Isana** » April 15th, 2015, 5:45 pm

Thanks for checking it out Kara. When I was debugging things, I was looking at the earliest LV recordings, and found that you were among those who made the earliest recordings.

kayray · Post by **kayray** » April 15th, 2015, 5:49 pm

Isana wrote:Thanks for checking it out Kara. When I was debugging things, I was looking at the earliest LV recordings, and found that you were among those who made the earliest recordings. :)

Yep :) Ten years this August!

ekzemplaro · Post by **ekzemplaro** » April 17th, 2015, 4:21 am

Hello Isana san,

Good job.
I noticed you search also collections.

I just searched 'Takehisa'.
It immediately showed 2 collections.

My catalog doesn't search collections. So his works can't be searched on my catalog.

Cheers,
Masa

Isana · Post by **Isana** » April 17th, 2015, 5:46 pm

Hello Masa-san. Thank you for trying the website and for your feedback.

The search algorithm also searches descriptions, that's why your search for Takehisa returned results. Other than that, the search algorithm does not systematically search for individual entries in collections. Although, this is doable because the necessary data is there on the Internet Archive. It will just involve additional programming work.

I hope you get back to recording Japanese audiobooks in the near future.