Running the same command gives inconsistent results - Windows WSL2 Ubuntu 20.04

[kanjieater]

I'm not sure if this is an issue with WSL2 as mentioned in #204 or something else.

https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/issues/204#issuecomment-1294001153

I can run the same command with the docker and get inconsistent results. I'm not sure what this error indicates

Could not detect length for file 20-finished.m4b, output 'mp4info version 2.1.1
/tmp/m4b-tool/20-finished.m4b:
ReadChildAtoms: "/tmp/m4b-tool/20-finished.m4b": In atom  missing child atom moov
FindIntegerProperty: no such property - moov.mvhd.modificationTime (src/mp4file.cpp,831)
mp4info: can't open /tmp/m4b-tool/20-finished.m4b
' does not contain a valid length value

I'm simply running a merge command with jobs matching my core count. docker run -it --rm -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v "$FOLDER":/mnt sandreas/m4b-tool:latest merge "./$(echo $NAME)_splitted/" --output-file="./$NAME.m4b" --jobs=$(nproc --all)

[kanjieater]

I also switched to hypervisor and am running from windows now. The same thing happens

ERROR       41499ms Could not detect length for file 22-finished.m4b, output 'mp4info version 2.1.1
/tmp/m4b-tool/22-finished.m4b:
ReadChildAtoms: "/tmp/m4b-tool/22-finished.m4b": In atom  missing child atom moov
FindIntegerProperty: no such property - moov.mvhd.modificationTime (src/mp4file.cpp,831)
mp4info: can't open /tmp/m4b-tool/22-finished.m4b
' does not contain a valid length value

[sandreas]

Mmh strange. Looks like a windows issue, I recently came across the jellyfin docker instructions where it is recommended to use a bind mount instead of a volume to overcome filesystem issues, but I think this is not possible on windows?!

 docker run -it --rm -u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
--mount type=bind,source=$FOLDER,target=/mnt
  sandreas/m4b-tool:latest merge "./$(echo $NAME)_splitted/" --output-file="./$NAME.m4b" --jobs=$(nproc --all)

And could you verify the issue by using an older docker image?

docker pull sandreas/m4b-tool:2022-11-05

[kanjieater]

I can confirm it exists on older builds

The mount flag also works but doesn't seem to be related

While my job count is accurate at 32 for a i9-13900ks, it seems like this issue happens more for a high job count. Lower job counts like 4 seem to work more consistently. I'm not sure if this is just luck though.

[kanjieater]

I'm still running into this. I've tried quite a few different methods as mentioned above, but at this point if I need to combine my mp4's into a m4b, how would I do that outside of m4b-tool?

""" Could not detect length for file 13-finished.m4b, output 'mp4info version 2.1.1 /tmp/m4b-tool/13-finished.m4b: ReadChildAtoms: "/tmp/m4b-tool/13-finished.m4b": In atom missing child atom moov FindIntegerProperty: no such property - moov.mvhd.modificationTime (src/mp4file.cpp,831) mp4info: can't open /tmp/m4b-tool/13-finished.m4b ' does not contain a valid length value """

[sandreas]

I'm still running into this. I've tried quite a few different methods as mentioned above, but at this point if I need to combine my mp4's into a m4b, how would I do that outside of m4b-tool?

Which docker image are you using? In newer images / recent versions of m4b-tool tone should be used for length detection - i think this is not the case here.

[kanjieater]

I'm still running into this. I've tried quite a few different methods as mentioned above, but at this point if I need to combine my mp4's into a m4b, how would I do that outside of m4b-tool?

Which docker image are you using? In newer images / recent versions of m4b-tool tone should be used for length detection - i think this is not the case here.

The latest docker image was from around 2 months ago it looks so, so I do have and am using version f0c29aaf4f4a .

I'm getting this error still:

Could not detect length for file 06-finished.m4b, output 'mp4info version 2.1.1
/tmp/m4b-tool/06-finished.m4b:
ReadChildAtoms: "/tmp/m4b-tool/06-finished.m4b": In atom  missing child atom moov
FindIntegerProperty: no such property - moov.mvhd.modificationTime (src/mp4file.cpp,831)
mp4info: can't open /tmp/m4b-tool/06-finished.m4b
' does not contain a valid length value

[sandreas]

I'm getting this error still:

Mhh, that is strange. Well, I'll investigate this again, may take a while. I already was going to provide another file iterator using system tools like find... this is a really annoying issue. sorry.

[kanjieater]

I'm getting this error still:

Mhh, that is strange. Well, I'll investigate this again, may take a while. I already was going to provide another file iterator using system tools like find... this is a really annoying issue. sorry.

No problem - I completely agree, it's core functionality that app developers should easily be able to access without you having to do a this much work on your side.

For working around the files not always being picked up I have been using this.

#!/bin/bash

audiobooks_path="/mnt/a/audiobooksm4b/"

# Loop over each audiobook folder
for audiobook_folder in "${audiobooks_path}"/*/
do
  # Print out the name of the audiobook folder
  echo "Merging files in ${audiobook_folder}..."

  # Get the audiobook name
  audiobook_name="$(basename "${audiobook_folder}")"

  # Get the list of mp4 files in the audiobook folder
  mp4_files=$(ls -1v "${audiobook_folder}"*.mp4)

  # Replace audiobooks_path with "./" in each mp4 file path
  mp4_files=$(echo "$mp4_files" | sed "s|${audiobook_folder}|./|g")

  # Wrap each mp4 file path in quotes
  mp4_files=$(echo "$mp4_files" | awk '{printf "\"%s\" ", $0}')

  # Run the m4b-tool Docker container to merge the MP4 files
  docker_cmd="docker run -it --rm -u $(id -u):$(id -g) -v \"${audiobook_folder}\":/mnt sandreas/m4b-tool:latest merge ${mp4_files} --output-file \"./${audiobook_name}.m4b\" --jobs $(nproc --all)"

  echo "$docker_cmd"
  eval "$docker_cmd"
done

Though, I still found I had to check the outputs of the chapters to make sure they matched, as sometimes m4b-tool would make the m4b skipping mp4 files but still creating the m4b. So i'm working around that with this:

https://github.com/kanjieater/AudiobookTextSync/blob/master/merge.py