Digital booklets

[classical11]

Hi,

I suspect this belongs to BubbleUpnp or other control points' forum but I thought I'd list it here first to see what people think.

One of the biggest gripes I have with digital music is lack of booklets and I find it difficult to switch away from CDs completely until I figure out a way to handle this. Although booklets might not be all that important for popular music (although I probably would still argue for them), they are very useful for classical music because they provide invaluable information about the recording itself - while it is possible to obtain info about the composer and work, it is difficult if not impossible to obtain information about the specific recording.

Fortunately this is slowly changing. Many classical labels now include booklets with digital purchases. They are not formatted properly but it's a good first step.

The question is though - how to easily access the booklet while listening to an album?

If I have to power up my computer, browse to the correct folder where the booklets are stored, open it up in Acrobat, then I might as well give up and stick to CDs. I need a far easier mechanism.

The way I'd like it to work would be for the control point to have a button/link on the Now Playing screen that would download the booklet from the server and open it up in an external pdf viewer.

I suspect this is outside the UPnP spec, but is it even achievable using a non-standard approach? For someone familiar with UPnP, is it posible for the control point to request say a document with a set name (e.g. booklet.pdf) from the same folder as the album? Or would an external http or ftp server have to be set up to achieve this?

Am I the only one who's unhappy with the lack of easy access to booklets?

Any ideas would be very appreciated.

Regards,
Ciprian

[JimR]

I went to a Naim demo at Music Mattes in Brum just before Christmas and they were using software that had the functionality you desire. From the iPad control point you could browse the CD booklet. Can't remember what it was called but it was good.

[simoncn]

(14-04-2013 06:35)classical11 Wrote:  I suspect this is outside the UPnP spec, but is it even achievable using a non-standard approach? For someone familiar with UPnP, is it posible for the control point to request say a document with a set name (e.g. booklet.pdf) from the same folder as the album? Or would an external http or ftp server have to be set up to achieve this?

There is no exact match for this in the UPnP specification. However, the <upnp:lyricsURI> tag comes fairly close, as many of these booklets contain words of vocal music.

The server would need to insert this tag based on a convention such as the one you have suggested (booklet.pdf from the same folder as the album), and the control point would need to read this tag and present the booklet contents to the user.

It wouldn't be practical for the control point to access the booklet file without cooperation from the server. MinimServer doesn't provide external HTTP access to arbitrary files on the server (for obvious security reasons), so it would necessary to run an additional HTTP server as you suggested. The control point would need some way of discovering this HTTP server and understanding/navigating its folder tree, which might not be the same as the navigation tree presented by the media server.

I suggest you raise this with the author of your favourite control point. If they are interested in supporting this, I'd be pleased to have a discussion with them about the right way for MinimServer to send the necessary URI information.

[bubbleguuum]

(14-04-2013 09:37)simoncn Wrote:  

(14-04-2013 06:35)classical11 Wrote:  I suspect this is outside the UPnP spec, but is it even achievable using a non-standard approach? For someone familiar with UPnP, is it posible for the control point to request say a document with a set name (e.g. booklet.pdf) from the same folder as the album? Or would an external http or ftp server have to be set up to achieve this?

There is no exact match for this in the UPnP specification. However, the <upnp:lyricsURI> tag comes fairly close, as many of these booklets contain words of vocal music.

The server would need to insert this tag based on a convention such as the one you have suggested (booklet.pdf from the same folder as the album), and the control point would need to read this tag and present the booklet contents to the user.

It wouldn't be practical for the control point to access the booklet file without cooperation from the server. MinimServer doesn't provide external HTTP access to arbitrary files on the server (for obvious security reasons), so it would necessary to run an additional HTTP server as you suggested. The control point would need some way of discovering this HTTP server and understanding/navigating its folder tree, which might not be the same as the navigation tree presented by the media server.

I suggest you raise this with the author of your favourite control point. If they are interested in supporting this, I'd be pleased to have a discussion with them about the right way for MinimServer to send the necessary URI information.

I would add support in BubbleUPnP and BubbleDS for that upnp:lyricsURI tag pointing to a pdf booklet.

BubbleDS has some support for displaying pdf booklets but since there is no standard, they must be stored on the Android device in a specific folder with specific naming rules so they can be associated to an album.

IMHO, there's no need for a separate http server for just serving pdf: this can be done by minimserver's http server that will accept to serve pdf URLs only if the file is inside one of the contentDir's.

I don't think there is even the need for a specific convention for pdf naming: just detecting the presence of a pdf in an album folder is enough to infer it is a booklet.

[magister]

I also would really like to have access to PDF booklets--as classical11 says, this is one of the main things that keeps us from ditching physical disks completely. If an album I download provides a booklet, I store it in the same directory as the FLAC files; I think it would be reasonable to establish this as a convention, thereby avoiding security issues if a server had to look elsewhere to find the booklets. I would prefer not to rename them all "booklet.pdf." Software should also allow for the possibility that there might be more than one PDF in a directory. Downloads from eClassical (BIS) provide the inlay card for the back of a CD case as well as the booklet. I keep both, even though I will never make a physical CD, because it's often faster to look at the card if I just want a quick reminder about what's on the album.

As a workaround, I copy some of the booklets to my iPad so I can access them with GoodReader (or whatever PDF app you use). This is nowhere near as nice as getting the PDF right from the control point, and takes up extra space on the tablet, but at least I don't have to take out a physical disk or go to my computer.

David

[simoncn]

(14-04-2013 14:09)magister Wrote:  I also would really like to have access to PDF booklets--as classical11 says, this is one of the main things that keeps us from ditching physical disks completely. If an album I download provides a booklet, I store it in the same directory as the FLAC files; I think it would be reasonable to establish this as a convention, thereby avoiding security issues if a server had to look elsewhere to find the booklets. I would prefer not to rename them all "booklet.pdf." Software should also allow for the possibility that there might be more than one PDF in a directory. Downloads from eClassical (BIS) provide the inlay card for the back of a CD case as well as the booklet. I keep both, even though I will never make a physical CD, because it's often faster to look at the card if I just want a quick reminder about what's on the album.

How would you suggest MinimServer should decide which of these two .pdf files should be associated with the <upnp:lyricsURI> tag?

[simoncn]

(14-04-2013 10:43)bubbleguuum Wrote:  I would add support in BubbleUPnP and BubbleDS for that upnp:lyricsURI tag pointing to a pdf booklet.

BubbleDS has some support for displaying pdf booklets but since there is no standard, they must be stored on the Android device in a specific folder with specific naming rules so they can be associated to an album.

That sounds great! I'll add this to the next feature release of MinimServer, assuming we can achieve consensus on how to identify the correct .pdf file for the album's booklet. For example, some albums aren't stored in a single folder.

Quote:IMHO, there's no need for a separate http server for just serving pdf: this can be done by minimserver's http server that will accept to serve pdf URLs only if the file is inside one of the contentDir's.

This is probably OK, but in practice I think it would mean that all files underneath contentDir would be accessible if the client is able to construct the corresponding URL that conforms to minimServer's URL conventions.

Quote:I don't think there is even the need for a specific convention for pdf naming: just detecting the presence of a pdf in an album folder is enough to infer it is a booklet.

This is fine unless there are multiple .pdf files or the album's contents are split across multiple folders. A convention would prevent unexpected results from the wrong .pdf file being served.

[bubbleguuum]

(14-04-2013 14:47)simoncn Wrote:  How would you suggest MinimServer should decide which of these two .pdf files should be associated with the <upnp:lyricsURI> tag?

Nothing prevents to send several <upnp:lyricsURI> tags, and the Control Point let the user choose. The problem being that there is no human readable name for these booklets (the pdf filename) to display.

Which makes me think a custom desc tag would be more appropriate.
The desc tag is part of the DIDL-Lite spec for a media server to send any non standard data it wants.
For example, here is how WMP sends the filesystem path as a custom desc tag:

Quote:<desc id="folderPath" nameSpace="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:WMPNSS-1-0/">
<microsoft:folderPath xmlns:microsoft="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:WMPNSS-1-0/">c:/music/[IR003] - Various Artists - Better By Design - 2002/01 - Rei Loci - Deep Blue.mp3/>
</desc>

A desc tag could be used to send several pdf URLs each with a readable name.

[bubbleguuum]

(14-04-2013 14:59)simoncn Wrote:  

(14-04-2013 10:43)bubbleguuum Wrote:  I would add support in BubbleUPnP and BubbleDS for that upnp:lyricsURI tag pointing to a pdf booklet.

BubbleDS has some support for displaying pdf booklets but since there is no standard, they must be stored on the Android device in a specific folder with specific naming rules so they can be associated to an album.

That sounds great! I'll add this to the next feature release of MinimServer, assuming we can achieve consensus on how to identify the correct .pdf file for the album's booklet. For example, some albums aren't stored in a single folder.

How pdfs are associated to albums is entirely the reponsability of the media server as the control point only care about the URL.
To make things simple on your end for a first version I suggest associating a booklet to an album only if the containing folder has a pdf.
That covers the vast majority of use case I believe.

(14-04-2013 14:59)simoncn Wrote:  

Quote:IMHO, there's no need for a separate http server for just serving pdf: this can be done by minimserver's http server that will accept to serve pdf URLs only if the file is inside one of the contentDir's.

This is probably OK, but in practice I think it would mean that all files underneath contentDir would be accessible if the client is able to construct the corresponding URL that conforms to minimServer's URL conventions.

Serving pdf booklets is IMHO not much different that serving album art jpg or png. You could deny all file serving requests of unknown file extensions that are in one of the contentDir's. That's what BubbleUPnP is doing as it is able to serve subtitles (.srt and others) but deny arbitrary forged file requests.

(14-04-2013 14:59)simoncn Wrote:  

Quote:I don't think there is even the need for a specific convention for pdf naming: just detecting the presence of a pdf in an album folder is enough to infer it is a booklet.

This is fine unless there are multiple .pdf files or the album's contents are split across multiple folders. A convention would prevent unexpected results from the wrong .pdf file being served.

[/quote]

See my previous message on how they all could be handled (desc tag or multiple upnp:lyricsURI tags)

[simoncn]

(14-04-2013 15:01)bubbleguuum Wrote:  Nothing prevents to send several <upnp:lyricsURI> tags, and the Control Point let the user choose. The problem being that there is no human readable name for these booklets (the pdf filename) to display.

I agree this is a problem. I think the best solution (at least initially) is for the server to send a single value, based on a convention.

Quote:Which makes me think a custom desc tag would be more appropriate.
The desc tag is part of the DIDL-Lite spec for a media server to send any non standard data it wants.
For example, here is how WMP sends the filesystem path as a custom desc tag:

<desc id="folderPath" nameSpace="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:WMPNSS-1-0/">
<microsoft:folderPath xmlns:microsoft="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:WMPNSS-1-0/">c:/music/[IR003] - Various Artists - Better By Design - 2002/01 - Rei Loci - Deep Blue.mp3/>
</desc>

A desc tag could be used to send several pdf URLs each with a readable name.

I'm fairly uncomfortable with this. The value would presumably need to be in either the proprietary minimserver.com namespace or the proprietary bubblesoftapps.com namespace. I'd much prefer to stay with industry standard tags.