syncabook

Overview

syncabook is a set of tools for creating ebooks with synchronized text and audio (a.k.a read along, read aloud, like Amazon's Whispersync). It allows anyone to create such an ebook using open EPUB3 with Media Overlays format. Here is a video that demonstrates how reading the ebook produced using syncabook looks like.

The synchronization is done automatically using afaligner library. It is a forced aligner that works by synthesizing text and then aligning synthesized and recorded audio using a variation of DTW (Dynamic Time Warping) algorithm. For alignment details, please refer to afaligner repository.

Requirements

• Python (>= 3.6)
• afaligner (optional – required only for synchronization step)
• Python packages: beautifulsoup4, Jinja2, lxml, progressbar2

Installation

1. Get syncabook:

$ git clone https://github.com/r4victor/syncabook/ && cd syncabook

2. Create source distribution and install:

$ python setup.py sdist && pip install dist/syncabook*.tar.gz

Now, syncabook is installed and can be run simply from command line:

$ syncabook -h

3. If you're going to produce your own books, your must install afaligner to do a synchronization. If you only need to assemble ebooks from prepared files like those in the synclibrivox repository, this step can be omitted.

Installation via Docker

Installing afaligner with all its dependencies may seem tedious. If it does for you, then consider using syncabook as a Docker container.

1. Get syncabook:

$ git clone https://github.com/r4victor/syncabook/ && cd syncabook

2. Create a Docker image:

$ docker build -t syncabook .

Now, syncabook can be run as a Docker container. The only difference with the native installation is that you have to mount a volume with -v option:

$ docker run -v "$PWD":/books/mybook syncabook sync /books/mybook

Ebook production

The ebook is assembled from source files in ebook's root directory which includes:

• audio/ directory containing a list of audiobook's audio files.
• sync_text/ directory containing a list of XHTML files synchronized with audio files.
• no_sync_text/ directory containing a list of XHTML files NOT synchronized with audio files (table of contents, colophon and any other files).
• smil/ directory containing SMIL files (synchronization info).
• metadata.json file which contains information about the book such as title, author, narrator, etc.

In order to prepare such a structure syncabook provides a set of tools. Here is a brief outline of a typical usage, see concrete example below.

From the start we have an empty directory named ebooks/my_ebook/. Then we need to get an audiobook and save it in ebooks/my_ebook/audio/. We also need to get a text. We save it, for example, as ebooks/my_ebook/text.txt. Now we need to convert plain text to a list of XHTML files. split_text command can help us to split one plain text file into a list of plain text files and to_xhtml command to convert a list of plain text files to a list of XHTML files. What's left is to synchronize text and audio. We may use sync command to do a synchronization and produce a list of SMIL files, or we may just use create command that will do a synchronization as well as create nav.xhtml file containing a table of contents and colophon.xhtml to credit contributors asking us for all the necessary information in the process and saving it as ebooks/my_ebook/metadata.json.

If you want to create an ebook for a LibriVox recording, download_files command lets you automatically download the audio files from librivox.org and transcribed text from gutenberg.org. Moreover, if someone has produced an ebook for that recording and contributed prepared XHTML and SMIL files to the synclibrivox repository, download_files command gets them as well and all you are left to do is to run create command.

Usage example

We will create an ebook for On the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau based on LibriVox recording by Bob Neufeld.

1. Download text and audio:

$ syncabook download_files https://librivox.org/civil-disobedience-by-henry-david-thoreau/ civil_disobedience

2. Audio is recorded in two parts, thus we create two files in civil_disobedience/plainext/ in which we respectively copy the contents of the first and the second part. This is a little bit of manual labor. If a book is long and recording is made in units like chapters, then split_text command can help us to automate this process.

3. Convert plain text files into XHTML files:

$ syncabook to_xhtml civil_disobedience/plaintext/ civil_disobedience/sync_text/

4. Sync text and audio to produce SMIL files:

$ syncabook sync civil_disobedience/

5. Create EPUB3 ebook:

$ syncabook create civil_disobedience/

We're asked for book's title, author and other information. nav.xhtml containing a table of contents and colophon.xhtml to credit contributors are generated and placed in civil_disobedience/no_sync_text/. We make some changes in nav.xhtml and proceed. Congrats! Our ebook is created and saved in civil_disobedience/out/.

See synclibrivox for this and other ebooks.

How to read and listen

The ebooks produced are in EPUB3 format and can be opened in any EPUB3 reader. Unfortunately, read aloud feature is not well supported. Here is a list of apps, which I know of, that support it:

• Readium (Chrome App) – great read & listen experience. Unfortunately, Google is going to deprecate Chrome Apps.

• Adobe Digital Editions (Windows, MacOS, iOS, Android) – fully supports EPUB3 standard. Not the best reading experience, though: text and audio seem out of sync.

• Menestrello (iOS, Android) – the best app to read & listen that was developed for this specific purpose. Unfortunately, no longer maintained and not even available on AppStore or Google Play. Still, .apk can be installed on Android.

Please let me know if you know of other apps that support EPUB3 with Media Overlays.

Notes

• While it is not required to have a one-to-one correspondence between text and audio files (i.e. the splitting can be done differently), as the practice shows, it's not always possible to achieve a satisfying quality of synchronization and if it is possible, one may need to know the appropriate alignment parameters. Therefore, it is recommended to split text in such a way as to match audio.