Generate Batch Audio

An addon that downloads and attaches audio to flashcards in bulk from URLs. Made for Anki, an SRS flashcard application.

Written in Python, using the requests library for handling GET API calls, and PyQT for the UI elements added in Anki.

Contents

• Motivation
• Quick Start
• Notes
• Usage Guide
• Credits
• Screenshots
• Contributing

Motivation

After a few hundred hours into mining and repping vocab on my Japanese flashcards, I reached the point where I wanted to ensure that my pitch accent was on par with native speech. However, living outside of Japan at the time, I couldn't naturally be immersed in the language, and I needed a way to replicate this myself.

The way that worked best for me was to add native-recorded audio for each of my vocabulary cards in Anki, but I quickly ran into a problem. Doing this the manual way --one card at a time-- was going to take too long as I had reached over 5000 cards created already. After searching for an answer online and coming up short, I decided to create this addon so that I, and hopefully many others like me, would not have to suffer through hours of tediously searching and adding audio clips to our flashcards.

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Quick Start

Anki addon page: https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/1156270186

1. Download Anki
2. In Anki, go to Tools -> Addons -> Get Addons... and paste the code: 1156270186
3. Restart Anki
4. Open the Anki browser and select the cards that need audio
5. Go to Edit > Generate Bulk Audio..., or use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+B

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Notes

Although this addon was initially created with Japanese cards in mind, it should also work for any other language provided that the fields and URLs are setup correctly.

This addon only works for Anki versions 2.1.45 and above.

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Usage Guide

• Open the Anki browser and select the cards that need audio
• Go to Edit > Generate Bulk Audio..., or use the shortcut Ctrl+Alt+B
• Sources are listed in priority order, 1 being the first source checked/used
  • If a source doesn't have the audio file, it will try the next source in priority order until all sources have been checked
• Sources should have a name and URL
  • There should be at least one parameter in each URL
  • Parameters are just the name of a field on your card, surrounded by curly braces {}
  • Parameters ignore casing, so if your field is named Reading, you may use {reading} where the reading should go in the URL
• The Audio field: selection will determine which field on the selected cards the audio will be save to
  • Any text or audio currently in that field will be replaced if successful
• The Filter kana: selection should be used to filter out non-hiragana characters from a field before using it
  • This should be set to (None) if your cards aren't Japanese
  • An example usage might be, if you are using JPod101 audio and your Reading field looks like 私[わたし], the kanji and brackets would cause the word to not be found. Enabling Filter kana for the Reading field would instead turn it only into hiragana which would allow the word to be correctly found
• The Delay between requests: amount is simply how long in seconds the addon should wait between download requests
  • This should be set to a higher number when using sites that use bot detection. Otherwise, this may result in an IP ban if their system detects you as bot for downloading audio too frequently
• The Duplicate to empty fields: checkbox should generally be enabled
  • This allows the addon to automatically use the previous parameter in the URL as the current paramter in the event that the current parameter is empty
  • This is very useful for cards that have, for example, the Word/Expression field in hiragana, and the Reading field has nothing. In this case, the Word/Expression field would be used in place of both fields
• The Dangerously fast: checkbox will remove a 0.1 second delay between audio downloads
  • If checked, this may result in errors, but would also be slightly faster, so please use at your own risk

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Credits

Credit goes to the Batch Editing addon from which I used its code as a base template. This was my first Anki addon, and I would have been extremely lost if there weren't such a similar addon to mine already created and open source.

Additionally, credit goes to Yomichan by FooSoft Productions from which I used their idea for comparing audio files. This made it possible to use JPod101 audio since they return an audio file whether or not one was actually found.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who has contributed to this project, your support is always very much appreciated, and a special thanks to the following contributors that helped get this addon off the ground:

<img src="https://github.com/Aquafina-water-bottle.png" width="60px;"/> <img src="https://github.com/sammy-snipes.png" width="60px;"/> <img src="https://github.com/elizagamedev.png" width="60px;"/> <img src="https://github.com/B0sh.png" width="60px;"/> <!-- <img src="https://github.com/ .png" width="60px;"/> -->

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Screenshots

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Contributing

Please help support the development of this addon by:

• Checking out the list of open issues.
• If you need new features, please open a new issue or start a discussion.
• When creating a pull request, kindly consider the time it takes for reviewing and testing, and maintain proper coding style.
• If you wish to use this project commercially, kindly contact me.

Please to support growth!

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