Bookfunnel audiobook ripping guide for audiobooks that do not have the "Download mp3s" option.
Requirements:
Bluestacks:
https://www.bluestacks.com/download.htmlPowerISO:
https://www.poweriso.com/download.phpEditor that can color code text for you. Any coding IDE will work.
The current version of Bluestacks is Bluestacks 5.
Bluestacks is needed because Google has been locking down the bootloader and barring rooted devices from working with their services or anything from the playstore.
PowerISO is needed for reading the contents of disk image of the android instance in windows. If your on Linux or on a Mac, you should be able to mount the disk image to browse the contents.
Install and run the BlueStacks Multi-Instance Manager.
To use anything from the Google playstore you will need to be running the Android 11 or newer. I used the Nougat 64-bit instance. Once you have a Bluestacks Instance set and up and running. You will need to sign into a google account before downloading the bookfunnel app.
Prep work you will need to do in the bookfunnel app:
You will need to pick the download quality you want to use.
Settings/Audio Settings/DOWNLOAD QUALITY
Here are the bitrates used from what I got from the "APP only" audiobooks I have on hand. These will likely vary depending on author.
Bitrate for BASIC
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 15kbps [A: aac he-aacv2, 44100 Hz, stereo, 15 kb/s]
Bitrate for STANDARD
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 31kbps [A: aac he-aacv2, 44100 Hz, stereo, 31 kb/s]
Bitrate for HIGH
Audio: AAC 44100Hz stereo 60kbps [A: aac he-aacv2, 44100 Hz, stereo, 60 kb/s]
I use the HIGH bitrate because it roughly translate for 8 hours of audio is anywhere from 250-350MB in size. STANDARD and BASIC start to have a tinning effect to the audio that can be heard.
Prep work before starting to rip the audio:
You will want to download ONLY 1 audiobook at a time to make things simple. The more audiobooks you download, the more files you are going to have to go through. You will want to delete downloaded completed riped audiobook before doing the next one.
Pick an audiobook you want to start to rip, download it in the quality you want. Once it is fully downloaded, you can close the Instance of the Bluestacks player window. Make sure the Bluestacks manager says the instance is fully shutdown.
You need to make sure it is shut down, Bluestacks locks the files you will need to open while it is in use.
Open file explorer and navigate to Bluestacks instance folder.
C:\ProgramData\BlueStacks_nxt\Engine
You should make a shortcut to this folder if your going to be doing alot of audio ripping. Once you have this folder opened, go to the folder of the instance you used, in this case "Nougat64".
C:\ProgramData\BlueStacks_nxt\Engine\Nougat64
Once your in the instance folder, you will want to look for "Data.vhdx", this is the disk image of the instancec. This disk image is formated as "Linux Ext4 Partition". Windows doesn't natively support Ext4. To view the contents properly you will need PowerISO. Using Mount doesn't work. If your on Linux or a Mac, you will be able to just mount "Data.vhdx" and browse the contents.
Once you have "Data.vhdx" opened, navigate to this folder:
\data\com.bookfunnel.bookfunnel\files
The easiest thing to do is to extract the files folder to either the desktop or a folder that you setup for working on. Basically treat "Data.vhdx" as a zip file and extract the folder to work with the files. On an Android phone/tablet this folder is protected and basically hides the contents.
Once you have the folder extracted, the important files are the 10 character files and the mediaConfig.json file.
Once you open the mediaConfig.json file in your editor, search for "tracks", this will be the beginning of the indexing.
"tracks":[
{"id":"ABCDE12345","title":"Chater 1","duration":16},
{"id":"BCDEF23456","title":"Chater 2","duration":16},
...]
The "id" is the associated audio file and "title" is metadata for the associaed audio file. The audio files doesn't use embeded metadata, mediaConfig.json contains that information for the app.
At the end of the mediaConfig.json file, it will list the cover image used and the audio format is listed under "file_type".
