Charles Tapley Hoyt

Brandon Sanderson has been releasing a few chapters a week of his
upcoming novel, [Wind and
Truth](https://bioregistry.io/isbn:1250319188), on his publisher's
website leading up to its December 6^th^ release. This includes the
audiobook chapters, but they're posted to Soundcloud and there's no good
way to listen at 1.6x speed. This post is a note sheet on how to
download audio from Soundcloud and prepare it for my audiobook reader.

## Get a package manager

First step is to get [uv](https://github.com/astral-sh/uv). I've been
very excited to watch this fast tool replace many iffy Python packaging
tools!

:::: {.language-console .highlighter-rouge}
::: {.highlight}
``` highlight
$ curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
```
:::
::::

See also the full [installation
documentation](https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/).

## Install the downloader tool

[yt-dlp](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) is *a feature-rich
command-line audio/video downloader with support for [thousands of
sites](https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/blob/master/supportedsites.md)*.

Second step is to install `yt-dlp`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge} using `uv tool install`{.language-plaintext
.highlighter-rouge}. uv installs the tool and its CLI in an isolated
virtual environment but makes it available globally on your system.

:::: {.language-console .highlighter-rouge}
::: {.highlight}
``` highlight
$ uv tool install yt-dlp
Resolved 1 package in 106ms
Installed 1 package in 28ms
 + yt-dlp==2024.11.18
Installed 1 executable: yt-dlp
```
:::
::::

Look how fast it installs with a warm cache!

## Download the audio

The chapters for *Wind and Truth* are indexed
[here](https://reactormag.com/columns/wind-and-truth/). For example, you
can navigate to [interludes 3 and
4](https://reactormag.com/read-wind-and-truth-by-brandon-sanderson-interludes-3-and-4/),
scroll to the bottom, then open the Soundcloud embed in a new browser
tab and copy the URL.

Third step is to invoke `yt-dlp`{.language-plaintext .highlighter-rouge}
from the console with the URL as the only argument (in quotes!). The
best thing about this tool is that it has a plugin-based architecture,
so it can deal with basically anything you give it.

:::: {.language-console .highlighter-rouge}
::: {.highlight}
``` highlight
$ yt-dlp "https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1931715512%3Fsecret_token%3Ds-WvtAtAMqqkc&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"
[SoundcloudEmbed] Extracting URL: https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1931715512%3Fsecret_toke...ser=true&visual=true
[soundcloud] Extracting URL: https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/1931715512?secret_token=s-WvtAtAMqqkc
[soundcloud] 1931715512: Downloading info JSON
[soundcloud] 1931715512: Downloading hls_mp3 format info JSON
[soundcloud] 1931715512: Downloading http_mp3 format info JSON
[soundcloud] 1931715512: Downloading hls_opus format info JSON
[info] 1931715512: Downloading 1 format(s): hls_opus_64
[hlsnative] Downloading m3u8 manifest
[hlsnative] Total fragments: 136
[download] Destination: Interludes - WIND AND TRUTH by Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer [1931715512].opus
[download] 100% of   10.10MiB in 00:00:04 at 2.14MiB/s
```
:::
::::

## Convert the audio's format

The only issue is that it gives output in the
[Opus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opus_(audio_format)) file format,
which isn't so easy to use. The fourth step is to convert this to
[m4b](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP4_file_format#Filename_extensions)
for easy use with an audiobook reader. After installing ffmpeg (e.g.,
with `brew install ffmpeg`{.language-plaintext .highlighter-rouge}), run

:::: {.language-shell .highlighter-rouge}
::: {.highlight}
``` highlight
$ ffmpeg \
    -i "Interludes - WIND AND TRUTH by Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer [1931715512].opus" \
    -c:a aac -b:a 128k -vn -f ipod interludes-3-and-4.m4b
ffmpeg version 7.1 Copyright (c) 2000-2024 the FFmpeg developers
  built with Apple clang version 16.0.0 (clang-1600.0.26.4)
  configuration: --prefix=/opt/homebrew/Cellar/ffmpeg/7.1_3 --enable-shared --enable-pthreads --enable-version3 --cc=clang --host-cflags= --host-ldflags='-Wl,-ld_classic' --enable-ffplay --enable-gnutls --enable-gpl --enable-libaom --enable-libaribb24 --enable-libbluray --enable-libdav1d --enable-libharfbuzz --enable-libjxl --enable-libmp3lame --enable-libopus --enable-librav1e --enable-librist --enable-librubberband --enable-libsnappy --enable-libsrt --enable-libssh --enable-libsvtav1 --enable-libtesseract --enable-libtheora --enable-libvidstab --enable-libvmaf --enable-libvorbis --enable-libvpx --enable-libwebp --enable-libx264 --enable-libx265 --enable-libxml2 --enable-libxvid --enable-lzma --enable-libfontconfig --enable-libfreetype --enable-frei0r --enable-libass --enable-libopencore-amrnb --enable-libopencore-amrwb --enable-libopenjpeg --enable-libspeex --enable-libsoxr --enable-libzmq --enable-libzimg --disable-libjack --disable-indev=jack --enable-videotoolbox --enable-audiotoolbox --enable-neon
  libavutil      59. 39.100 / 59. 39.100
  libavcodec     61. 19.100 / 61. 19.100
  libavformat    61.  7.100 / 61.  7.100
  libavdevice    61.  3.100 / 61.  3.100
  libavfilter    10.  4.100 / 10.  4.100
  libswscale      8.  3.100 /  8.  3.100
  libswresample   5.  3.100 /  5.  3.100
  libpostproc    58.  3.100 / 58.  3.100
Input #0, ogg, from 'Interludes - WIND AND TRUTH by Brandon Sanderson, narrated by Kate Reading and Michael Kramer [1931715512].opus':
  Duration: 00:22:12.36, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 63 kb/s
  Stream #0:0: Audio: opus, 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp
      Metadata:
        encoder         : Lavc58.91.100 libopus
Stream mapping:
  Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (opus (native) -> aac (native))
Press [q] to stop, [?] for help
Output #0, ipod, to 'interludes-3-and-4.m4b':
  Metadata:
    encoder         : Lavf61.7.100
  Stream #0:0: Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 128 kb/s
      Metadata:
        encoder         : Lavc61.19.100 aac
[out#0/ipod @ 0x6000016e4000] video:0KiB audio:20840KiB subtitle:0KiB other streams:0KiB global headers:0KiB muxing overhead: 1.175908%
size=   21086KiB time=00:22:12.34 bitrate= 129.6kbits/s speed=43.8x
[aac @ 0x151004f50] Qavg: 668.452
```
:::
::::

## Easy listening

I'm using [BookPlayer](https://github.com/TortugaPower/BookPlayer), an
open source project to listen to books. I usually sync them by using
AirDrop to send the m4b files to my phone, then using its import menu.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Happy listening!

P.S., I wrote [a
script](https://gist.github.com/cthoyt/62b26908b8822a7596c6b663ee910d5f)
that automates crawling the Wind and Truth index, downloading, and
converting these files.


Brandon Sanderson has been releasing a few chapters a week of his upcoming novel, Wind and Truth, on his publisher’s website leading up to its December 6
<sup>
 th
</sup>
release. This includes the audiobook chapters, but they’re posted to Soundcloud and there’s no good way to listen at 1.6x speed. This post is a note sheet on how to download audio from Soundcloud and prepare it for my audiobook reader.

Downloading audio from Soundcloud

Mark Padgham

Laura DeCicco

Julia Gustavsen

Jeff Hollister

Anna Krystalli

Mauro Lepore

Karthik Ram

Emily Riederer

Noam Ross

Maëlle Salmon

Adam Sparks

Melina Vidoni

rOpenSci Software Peer Review's guidance is gathered in an [online
book](https://devguide.ropensci.org/) that keeps improving!This blog
post summarises what's new in our Dev Guide 0.8.0, with all changes
listed in the [changelog](https://devguide.ropensci.org/booknews.html).

## Farewell Stefanie Butland

After many years of fabulous contributions to the rOpenSci community,
Stefanie Butland [left the role of community
manager](/blog/2022/01/14/msg-from-stefanie/) at the start of 2022. The
Dev Guide included several references to Stefanie, particularly
regarding preparing blog posts, as well as preparing Dev Guide releases.
Her name has been removed and replaced with a generic "*Community
Manager*" title.

## Expanded Aims and Scope

This version of the Dev Guide reflects the recent expansion of our
peer-review system to include [statistical software](/software-review/).
The [*Aims and Scope*
section](https://devguide.ropensci.org/policies.html#aims-and-scope) now
explains that statistical software is also within scope, and links
directly to the [*Statistical Software Dev
Guide*](https://stats-devguide.ropensci.org).

## Updated Guide for Authors

One of the largest changes in the current release is in the [*Guide for
Authors* chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/authors-guide.html).
This used to be a largely unstructured collection of dot points
reflecting our evolving "best practices". These points were collated and
refined as our peer review system evolved over the years. The updated
*Guide for Authors* chapter provides a more structured reference,
divided into the four main sections of:

- Planning a submission or pre-submission enquiry (at what stage of the
  package lifecycle should it be submitted)
- Preparing for submission (practical steps)
- The submission process
- The review process

These changes should both make the chapter more informative for people
planning to submit packages for review, and also clarify what authors
can expect from our peer review process. Additional changes include
informing authors of packages under review that they can now directly
call `@ropensci-review-bot check package` at any time during review to
trigger an automated package report.We also now have explicit advice
under *Planning a Submission* to ensure availability during the review
process, and to consider the valuable time volunteered by package
reviewers. In *The Review Process*, we also advise authors to
immediately inform us if they are no longer able to respond to
reviewers. These improvements to the *Authors Guide* should hopefully
improve coordinated time management of all those involved in software
reviews.

## Updated Editors' Guide

The [*Editors' Guide*
Chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/editorguide.html) now includes an
additional section on "Answering Reviewers' Questions", with links to a
few previous reviews in which editors have worked with reviewers and
package authors to implement major package changes prior to ultimate
acceptance.

## More automation

Our [automation
processes](/blog/2022/05/31/chatops-review-system-github/) continue to
ease the burden on all those involved in our software peer review
system. This version of the Dev Guide can happily jettison an entire
"approval comment template" that reviewers used to have to
copy-and-paste into an issue. That template is now automatically
inserted by the `@ropensci-review-bot` as soon as a submission is
approved. As described above, authors can now also call `check package`
directly in a GitHub review thread.

Our [*Continuous Integration Best Practices*
chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/ci.html) now states that all
packages are checked on submission by our own internal [`pkgcheck`
system](https://docs.ropensci.org/pkgcheck), and that this system is
also available as [a GitHub action](/blog/2022/02/01/pkgcheck-action/)
which authors are encouraged to use prior to submission. That section
now also includes a general description of GitHub actions.

While not exactly an automation enhancement, our review template now
explicitly states that reviewers can download a local copy, and complete
a review either as an Rmarkdown (`.Rmd`) or plain markdown (`.md`)
document, and simply copy-and-paste into the GitHub issue to complete
the review. We are indebted to [Hugo Gruson for that
clarificiation](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/pull/375).

### Automation also comes to the Dev Guide

In addition to the automation advances described above, this release of
the Dev Guide has also been eased through automation, notably through
collecting several scripts and helper functions in a new R package,
[`devguider`](https://github.com/ropensci-org/devguider). One function,
`prerelease_checklist()`, collects all current issues on the [Dev Guide
GitHub repository](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/issues) that
are associated with the upcoming release, adds then to our [pre-release
checklist](https://devguide.ropensci.org/bookreleaseissue.html), and
opens a new GitHub issue with all of those items as a checklist used to
guide the next release. This checklist also contains explicit
instructions on using other functions from the `devguider` package.

## Guidance on `contributing.md` files

Having a contributing file is [compulsory for rOpenSci
packages](https://devguide.ropensci.org/collaboration.html?q=contributing#contributing-guide),
and is automatically checked by our automated package checks. We've
updated our [recommendations for CONTRIBUTING.md
files](https://devguide.ropensci.org/collaboration.html#contributing-guide)
to suggest a number of explicit approaches, including the one-line
`usethis::use_tidy_contributing()` function, and links to two more
extensive examples of contributing guides. We now also recommend the
inclusion of a lifecycle statement in package contributing guides, to
give contributors an understanding of the likely future development of a
package.

## Authorship of included code

In response to an [idea from Klaus
Vigo](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/issues/388), the [section of
package
authorship](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#authorship) now
has an additional section describing how to acknowledge additional
authors of external code included in a package.

## No more CRAN notes for "rev" role in package authorship

Standard rOpenSci practice is to [acknowledge package reviewers in your
`DESCRIPTION` file](/blog/2018/03/16/thanking-reviewers-in-metadata/) by
including their names with a `role = "rev"` identifier (subject to their
approval). This used to raise notes in CRAN package checks on older
versions of R. That is thankfully no longer the case, and we are happy
to have finally been able to remove that statement. Everybody can now
simply insert `role = "rev"` to acknowledge all reviewers, and all CRAN
systems will happily recognise those statements.

## Updated package archiving practice

We have updated our guidance on package evolution to include a new
section on [package
archiving](https://devguide.ropensci.org/evolution.html#archivalguidance).
This section reflects our updated policies that archived packages should
move `README.md` to an alternative location, and reduce the main
`README.md` to a minimal form explaining only that the package has been
archived, and linking to the former `README.md` contents.

## Two-Factor Authentication now required

Our [*Package Security Best
Practices*](https://devguide.ropensci.org/package-development-security-best-practices.html)
now *recommend* the use of two-factor authentication (2FA) for GitHub,
and clarify that 2FA is [mandatory for all rOpenSci organization members
and outside
collaborators](/blog/2022/05/16/requiring-2fa-for-the-ropensci-github-organization/).

## Other guidance updates

- The [*Citation*
  guidelines](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#citation-file)
  now suggest using [the `cffr` package](/blog/2021/11/23/cffr/) to
  create a `CITATION.cff` file.

- The [*Further Guidance* on Package
  Development](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#further-guidance)
  now includes a section on useful blogs.

- The appendix on redirecting package documentation has been updated
  [thanks to Peter Desmet
  (#387)](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/pull/387).

- The [*Testing* section of the *Packaging Guide*
  chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#testing) has an
  expanded list of recommended packages, particularly those for testing
  and mocking responses from web resources. That section now also
  suggests reading the blog post, [\"*Why good developers write bad unit
  tests*\"](https://mtlynch.io/good-developers-bad-tests/), by Michael
  Lynch.

- The [*Recommanded Scaffolding* section of the *Packaging Guide*
  chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#recommended-scaffolding)
  now includes explicit recommendation of spatial packages, and details
  of (soon-to-be) obsolete spatial packages.

- The section in that chapter on [`roxygen2` use in
  documentation](https://devguide.ropensci.org/building.html#roxygen2-use)
  also describes the `@seealso` and `@family` tags for grouping
  functions in package documentation sites.

- The [section in the *Collaboration Guide*
  Chapter](https://devguide.ropensci.org/collaboration.html#gitflow) on
  "Working with collaborators" has been streamlined, with [additional
  links](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/pull/374) on giving and
  receiving code reviews.

## Conclusion

In this post we summarized the changes incorporated into our book
"rOpenSci Packages: Development, Maintenance, and Peer Review" over the
last months. We are thankful for all contributions that shaped this
release. We are already working on the next version, including further
improvements such as guidance on [packages which wrap other
software](https://discuss.ropensci.org/t/standards-for-wrapper-packages-and-some-pracical-questions/2859),
and recommendations for [further
automation](https://github.com/ropensci/dev_guide/issues/382).


rOpenSci Software Peer Review’s guidance is gathered in an online book that keeps improving!This blog post summarises what’s new in our Dev Guide 0.8.0, with all changes listed in the changelog.Farewell Stefanie Butland  After many years of fabulous contributions to the rOpenSci community, Stefanie Butland left the role of community manager at the start of 2022.

Rogue Scholar Posts

Downloading audio from Soundcloud

rOpenSci Dev Guide 0.8.0: Updates