Stoffel is a free Windows app for blind and low-vision users who want a calmer way to find and listen to audio-described movies and series from AudioVault.
The idea is simple: AudioVault has useful material, but browsing long web pages full of links is not always fun with a screen reader. Stoffel gives you a local searchable library, playback controls, metadata, bookmarks, a sleep timer, offline copies, and fewer web-page wrestling matches.
Tagline: Because the best way to browse is to not browse at all.
Stoffel is independent. AudioVault does not endorse, approve, maintain, or support Stoffel. AudioVault might not know or care that Stoffel exists, and Stoffel should behave respectfully either way. You still need your own AudioVault account, and all copyrights remain with their respective owners.
Stoffel helps you log in to AudioVault, build a local index of movies and series, search that index, play audio, and optionally keep local copies for offline listening. It also stores useful local information such as watch status, personal ratings, comments, bookmarks, playback positions, and metadata.
Stoffel is named after Stoffel the South African honey badger, famous for escaping enclosures as if humans had merely provided him with puzzles. That is the spirit of the app: not angry, not flashy, just determined to get you out of boring pages and into the thing you wanted to hear.
Login speed depends on your internet connection, AudioVault server response, and normal network grumpiness. Sometimes login is instant. Sometimes it takes a few seconds. Stoffel plays a small success sound when login completes if that setting is enabled.
The main screen is for daily use. It has search, a View filter, the results list, actions for the selected item, player controls, bookmarks, metadata output, and status information.
Settings, diagnostic tools, report creation, indexing jobs, and other maintenance tasks are kept away from the main listening flow as much as possible. They are useful, but they do not need to stand in the middle of the room waving their arms.
Type in the search box and press Enter or the Search button. Results come from your local Stoffel library index.
The View filter lets you choose All, Movies, Series, Episodes, Offline, Want to watch, Currently watching, or Watched. It is a standard combo box: use Alt+Down Arrow to open it, arrow keys to choose, and Enter to select.
Use Series when you want a cleaner series view. Press Enter on a series name to open its seasons. Press Enter on a prepared season to open its episodes, or press Ctrl+P to prepare/play a season that has not been downloaded yet. Press Backspace or the Back button to return to the previous view.
Press Ctrl+P to play or pause. Press Ctrl+S to stop playback and save your position. Rewind and forward use Ctrl+[ and Ctrl+]. See the Keyboard Shortcuts page for the full list.
When you play a movie that is not already offline, Stoffel can download enough to start playback while the rest continues in the background. For series seasons and archives, Stoffel asks before downloading and preparing the season.
Stoffel includes speed, volume, a basic equalizer, voice boost, bookmarks, resume position, and a sleep timer. The equalizer can help with older or muddy audio where speech needs a little help escaping the swamp.
Many series seasons arrive from AudioVault as ZIP archives. Stoffel does not try to play audio directly from inside a ZIP file. When you choose to prepare or play a season, Stoffel downloads the archive, extracts the audio files into a series and season folder, creates episode records in the local library, and deletes the downloaded ZIP after successful extraction so storage is not wasted.
After extraction, Stoffel creates episode records. You can reach them either by opening the series and season from the Series view, or by choosing Episodes in the View filter if you want to see all known episodes in one list. Episodes get their own playback position, watched status, bookmarks, rating, comment, and local file record. Episode names are cleaned a little more intelligently now, including common patterns such as S01E02 and 1x02. When OMDb metadata is available for the series or season, Stoffel also copies that metadata to the extracted episode records so the local database becomes more useful over time.
If a prepared season has a stored compressed ZIP size and AudioVault later reports a different size, Stoffel can warn that a newer or different archive may exist and offer to refresh the download. You can also force a refresh from More Options, Refresh selected download.
The play queue is a simple list of items Stoffel can play one after another. Use Add to Queue for the selected item, Play Queue to start the next item, Remove Queue Item to trim the list, Move Queue Up and Move Queue Down to reorder it, and Clear Queue to empty it.
Opening a prepared season now just opens the episode list. It does not quietly rebuild the queue behind your back. When Auto-play next episode is checked, Stoffel builds the next-episode queue when playback starts. That keeps browsing calm and lets playing behave like playing, which is how civilisation is meant to work.
Use Keep this item offline when you want Stoffel to keep a local copy. Movies are stored as local audio files. ZIP seasons are downloaded, extracted into series and season folders, and then played locally. Stoffel does not stream from inside ZIP files because that way lies misery and buffering goblins.
Offline copies can be managed from the Offline Library Manager. Removing an offline copy does not remove anything from AudioVault.
You can choose the offline storage folder in Settings. This is useful if your C drive is small and you would rather store prepared seasons, extracted episodes, and kept movies on a larger drive such as Q:\Stoffel Offline. Save settings after changing the folder. Stoffel validates that the folder can be created and written to.
Changing the offline folder does not automatically move existing offline files. That is intentional; silently shuffling large audio libraries between drives would be rude, slow, and exactly the kind of nonsense that fills a laptop at 2 AM.
Use Check for AudioVault Additions in Settings to compare the current AudioVault movie and series listings against your local Stoffel index. Stoffel compares AudioVault item IDs, not just titles, because titles can be messy while IDs are usually the calmer adult in the room.
This check reads listing pages politely and does not download media files. If Stoffel finds new item IDs, it tells you how many were found and asks whether you want to add those entries to your local index. If you say no, nothing is imported.
This is for additions, not a full forensic audit. If AudioVault removes, renames, or reorganises something, a full index refresh is still the better maintenance tool.
OMDb can provide title, year, genre, actors, director, runtime, plot, IMDb ID, and rating. Get a free API key from https://www.omdbapi.com/apikey.aspx, paste it into Settings, and press Test OMDb API Key.
Sometimes OMDb cannot find the right IMDb information automatically. That is expected, not a Stoffel disaster. AudioVault titles may include tags, alternate names, years, regions, or description notes that confuse automatic matching.
Use Manual OMDb Search when automatic lookup misses or chooses badly. You can search by title and optional year, or paste an IMDb ID to link the exact movie or series.
Free OMDb keys allow up to 1,000 requests per 24 hours. Stoffel caches successful metadata locally so it does not keep asking OMDb for the same title over and over like an overexcited woodpecker.
The base URL is normally https://audiovault.net. Enter your AudioVault email and password. Automatic login is optional.
You can choose to enter the password every time, use Windows Credential Manager, or store it in Stoffel's local database. The database option is convenient but less secure than Windows Credential Manager.
Choose whether Enter plays selected movies, whether listened items should be kept offline automatically, and where Stoffel stores offline content. Put offline content on a large secondary or external drive if your system drive is tight on space.
The local index makes searching fast. Use Build or Refresh Full Index for a full refresh, or Check for AudioVault Additions when you only want Stoffel to look for new AudioVault item IDs. Header checks and overnight metadata indexing are optional slower tasks for richer local information.
Stoffel can play small sounds for startup, login success, copy actions, warnings, and long-running activity. These are optional. The app is designed for keyboard use and screen readers first, with larger text and high contrast options for partially sighted users.
Kwagga.com is the intended home for Hanif Kruger software releases. The main site is https://kwagga.com/. The Stoffel release page is https://kwagga.com/software/app.php?app=stoffel.
Use Help and Support, then Check for Stoffel Updates, to ask Kwagga.com whether a newer Stoffel release is available. Stoffel sends only the app name, current version, release channel, platform, and architecture. It does not send your AudioVault login, AudioVault password, OMDb key, local library contents, or offline storage folder.
Stoffel does not silently download update packages. If Kwagga.com lists a newer version, Stoffel tells you the version, notes, and size when known, then asks before opening the release page. No ambush downloads. Your internet cap deserves basic manners.
Kwagga.com is being prepared as a latest-release archive. When a newer installer or ZIP is imported, the server can replace the older package instead of storing every previous build forever.
AudioVault is the website that Stoffel connects to. It provides access to the audio-only portion of audio-described films and series. For blind listeners, that can mean enjoying the descriptive narration without needing the video stream, app, or platform where the description originally appeared.
Stoffel does not replace AudioVault and does not host any AudioVault content. Think of Stoffel as a calmer front door: it helps you log in, search, listen, keep offline copies when you choose, and organise your listening history without forcing you to browse yourself into oblivion with a web browser.
AudioVault is especially useful because audio description is scattered across services, countries, catalogues, and release windows. Some titles are easy to find on one platform and impossible on another. Stoffel simply makes your own AudioVault access easier to use while trying to respect the effort, bandwidth, server resources, and contributors behind AudioVault.
Important: AudioVault does not endorse, approve, maintain, or support Stoffel. AudioVault might not know or care that Stoffel exists, and Stoffel should behave respectfully either way. Stoffel is an independent freeware frontend. If AudioVault changes how its website works, Stoffel may need updates.
If you use AudioVault and find it valuable, consider supporting the people who maintain it.
Stoffel is free and should remain free. If you want to support development, you can make an optional donation here:
https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/pkruger
Donations are appreciated, but they are never required and do not change what the app does.