Metadata problems, The Eustace Diamonds, Anthony Trollope [SOLVED; App issue]

[Kirsten Wever]

I downloaded Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds on both my Android phone and laptop, and on both the chapters were seriously out of order.

[annise]

It would be easier to chase this down if you could tell us what format you downloaded and where from.

Anne

[zachh]

I also experienced chapters out of order with some of these books when I was listening to this Trollope series, but I assumed it was something about my player. On the computer (a MacBook Air of middle age) I would download a zip file from LibriVox and it would look good, but when I put it on the player (a Clip Jam mp3 player) the chapters would be arranged oddly, so I would pay attention at the end of each section so I could find the next number manually. They wouldn't all be out of order, but some would be omitted from their place in the list and either stuck on the end or sometimes put in as a separate book. It was a little inconvenient, but still well worth the trouble.

[TriciaG]

I downloaded the 64 kbps files (the "Download" link on our catalog page). Aside from there not being track numbers, the files are all properly numbered, and the titles all have leading numbers, so they should sort in order.

I also think this is an issue with the listening device. There may be some setting on there to choose the sort order, which isn't being done right.

[Kirsten Wever]

I wonder about the device-as-culprit theory, since I have now downloaded them on (1) my android and (2) my laptop (Windows), and SINCE then (3) a friend's desktop -- same issues in all three places.

However, I would like to know whether several different people are downloading these in order? If so, then the device culprit notion must be right.

[TriciaG]

Do they show up in the same (wrong) order? If so, could you show the order? Maybe there's something we could glean from that.

[Kirsten Wever]

I've since changed the order manually and deleted -- however, I will download again now and let you know.

-Your sincere friend, the Canadian G M

[Kirsten Wever]

Hello All,

Problem understood, possibly solved -- I think.

I just re-downloaded The Eustace Diamonds to phone and laptop, with these results: There was no scrambling of files downloaded to and played on my laptop. I copied and extracted the zip file to my phone, where my file manager displayed them correctly, but my music player app both displayed and played them out of order. That is, the files were scrambled by the Samsung Music app. However, this is a relatively recent problem: about four years ago I downloaded this book and the earlier version of the app displayed and played the files in the right order. So it’s the current version of Samsung Music that’s scrambling files.

NB: Samsung increasingly dominates the smart phone market. (It now has over 40% of international market share; Apple’s iPhone sales have been dropping commensurately; other competitors are minor players.) That is, more Samsung users --> more Samsung Music users --> more scrambled files --> more problems for LibriVox listeners. But there’s an easy work-around: download a different audio-player app. (I just installed Smart Audiobook Player – free basic version, no ads, $2 full version). And Samsung will probably find a fix. Sometime.

Thanks for your help, which allowed me to figure out I only needed a new audio app. I’m sorry I got it wrong to start with (but the book was playing out of order on two computers as well as my phone … unsolved mystery).

Anyhow, if this does become a more frequent problem, there’s a simple solution.*

Best, Kirsten

* I spent a couple of hours checking out alternative audio player apps for Android, and my impression is that for music or spoken word, given no ads, with a full “basic” menu and only a $2 one-time fee, Smart Audiobook Player is a good choice. Probably you all know the market far more intimately than I do.

[annise]

I'm glad it worked out - I downloaded both of them and I couldn't see anything different about them and that worried me

Anne

[CrashC]

I've been having similar issues for about a week now. I did not know that this was linked to the issue of metadata until I found this forum a couple of hours ago. Here's what I've seen:

I use a sandisk SportGo mp3 player to listen to the audio books while I exercise on workout machines. The very small size of the player and its large disk size (32 GB, enough for about 50 titles or so from LibriVox make it very convenient for me compared to any other device. I have been using my desktop computer (a linux desktop, not on the approved list for the SportGo) to load the player with audiobooks and to delete them when I finish them, and I have not had much trouble until very recently. So far so good. A very nice experience, much enjoying the experience, etc, etc.

Then, a few days or a week ago, I finished the first volume of the LibriVox title Abraham Lincoln: A History in 10 Volumes. No problems, again. Very much liking this splendid history, I deleted volume 1 from my player, downloaded, unzipped, and put on the MP3 player, volumes two and three, so that if I finished volume two in the middle of an exercise period, I could continue listening to the same work uninterrupted. The linux computer showed one file folder, appropriately titled, for each volume, about 30 MP3 files (chapters) in each folder, appropriately titled, and when I copied those folders into the Audiobooks folder of the MP3 player, the linux computer to which the MP3 player was mounted showed that everything looked good on the MP3 player's storage, just like all the other books I have been playing looked. But when I unmounted the player from the desktop computer and looked at its menu of audiobooks, I was very surprised to see that the hierarchy of folders and files was presented in the menu quite differently than it had appeared when it was created. Particularly in the case I describe, the two volumes of the Lincoln history were combined into what appears to be a single audiobbok, with all the chapters, the two chapter 1's first, the two chapter 2's second, the two chapter 3's third, ... with no particular order for one volume or the other in the paired adjacent entries. Wud?

What I have determined from experimenting with various attempts to correct this by changing folder and chapter names, reformatting and reloading the books, is that besides the audio, there is text metadata hidden in the MP3 files that presumably describes the contents of each MP3 file and its relationship to its respective encompassing whole. And I am guessing that the operating system of the MP3 player is using this metadata to configure the hierarchical menu of audiobooks that it offers me, ignoring or overruling the hierarchical structure of folders and files at least some time. I like a challenge, and I intend to find some way to prevent this by mucking with the hidden metadata so that the SportGo can do what it must but give me what I want. I infer from what I see on these forums that LibriVox is using some kind of system or data entry forms to try to standardize the data that goes into the metadata part of the MP3's, but that whatever methods are in use are less than 100% effective, perhaps because of occasional variations in human behavior in some cases, and perhaps because of variations in what will work for all the different kinds of audio playback machinery in others.

Is this a significant problem for Librivox?

Is there anything that I might be able to do improve the situation?

Does anyone have any good ideas for me about how to verify and/or modify the MP3 files so that ail is well for my MP3 palyer?

(Edit) I just took a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3, the spec for metadata in MP3 files. It says that the metadata allows only 30 characters for the title (I guess for audiobooks this is the chapter title, etc), and 30 characters for album name (book title?). Could my problem be that the names of the volumes in the Lincoln biography are not distinct in the first 30 characters?

Thanks for reading (or not),

CrashC

[Kirsten Wever]

Wow.

Although I THINK I'm the one who first posted this issue, it was a full year ago. I'd forgotten. HOWEVER the problem continues. So here's my input 51 weeks later. Or it may be the input of my ego, whose threadbare tablecloth is an MIT Ph. D --okay, it's in politics. Note, this is more data, free of solution.

I also had decided it was a meta data issue, I also went in and changed data to order files consistently, if not correctly, and my consistent naming scheme, at 4 levels actually solved the problem totally...

except for The Eustace Diamonds.

Hm... I'm staying tuned

For what it's worth, y'all! I'm starting tuned here.

[CrashC]

Kirsten,

When you say "4 levels," do you mean (1) book folder name, (2) mp3 file name, (3) mp3 metadata title, (4) mp3 metadata album name?

Did you convince yourself that all four had to be consistent to get good results?

I did find that the 30 character metadata album names for the volumes 2 and 3 of the Lincoln history were identical, so that mystery may be explained now. I have succeeded tonight in mashing over the mp3 metadata album name for the MP3's in volume 3 of the Lincoln history and loading them on my MP3 player; got them all in their own folder just as I hoped. One of the chapters fell out of order in the menu because its title did not start with a chapter number, but no other difficulties noted.

Things I noticed while doing this that might cause other problems in other situations:

1. I believe that I read that in recent years (like the last 20 or so) that the MP3 metadata was usually put near the start of the file. For the chapters in volumes two and three of the Lincoln book, I found the metadata always with the name of the book separated from the back end of the file by only 32 bytes. Perhaps in some cases the player software cannot find the metadata, or perhaps if MP3 files are dragged and dropped onto the player but the player is not completely finished writing them when it is unplugged or unmounted, the metadata is not completely written correctly. IDK.

2. My MP3 player builds a file, named AUDBOOK.LIB, in the root directory of its storage that contains 384 kb of data for the 20 or so audiobooks I have on the player. What all that is or what it does, I don't know, but it apparently includes some stuff that is extracted from the MP3 metadata. If or how the player keeps that in sync with the data in the MP3 files if or when one tinkers with the MP3 files to deal with the problems we are discussing, I don't know. I completely reformatted the storage in my player this afternoon, so I didn't worry about having old bad data hiding out anywhere when I did my fix tonight. How many other players do stuff like that, IDK.

Best to all,


CrashC


p.s. I am happening to be taking a very informal class in modern political theory for geezers like me that is taught by a splendid old-timer who claims that he also did some work political science at MIT, so of you and your ilk in awe I stand.