I keep coming back here hoping official support has been added. I listen to a lot of radio programs that I have purchased from Audible. I would love to have them be part of my Plex collection. I don’t even care if there is no scraper. I would happily do it all manually if only Plex could handle them well once that was done.
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@alehel Have you tried using Chronicle or Prologue for mobile? They work pretty well in my experience.
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I use Prologue and it’s very good
I use Prologue as well
Just checking in to see if by chance any official support is even being talked about? does anyone know why PLEX has decided to not develop this overwhelmingly requested feature.
As much as I wish audiobook support was better in Plex, or in Emby for that matter, and as much as I use audiobooks I think “overwhelmingly requested” is a rather huge exaggeration. The people that want/need audiobook support are actually a pretty tiny minority of the people that use local media streaming.
If I could effectively read regular books I would as the experience of reading is superior to listening. But I cannot read without it causing bad headaches so i have to use audiobooks. My suggestion for most people wanting to use audiobooks in Plex is, don’t. Create some separate system outside Plex to listen to your books.
There is no real advantage to using Plex for audiobooks and several disadvantages. I have a separate computer (It also runs a backup server) that runs MediaMonkey and I feed the audio from that computer into a whole house system so I can listen anywhere. It also allows me, through just a little improvising, to control playback through my Echo devices.
My setup is not ideal but it works for me. I strongly recommend that anyone wanting to regularly listen to audiobooks in their home come up with some other solution besides Plex. Plex is just not well suited at all for audiobooks.
Just doing a quick scroll through the Suggested Features I can only find 2 other feature requests (Better Playlists & Comicbook Reader) with more votes than Audiobook support. To me, that sounds like an overwhelming amount of active users of local streaming not really a tiny minority of the focus group we are talking about.
I would have to disagree that it would have more disadvantages that advantages. I am already running a separate computer just for my Plex, so it can run 24/7 and can be used by the whole family (and outside friends). Making a separate computer just for my audiobooks when my Plex server is already running seems like more of a disadvantage.
I’ve tried other Audiobook Streaming Software (running on my Plex Server) but so far they have been worse than Plex is (currently) for handling Remote Access issues and cross-device support for listening.
But this is the point of the request, isn’t it? We all have “Our Media” that we want to stream personally. Audiobooks are media. It seems only a short parallel to (most) users that Music and Audiobooks should be usable on a “Media Server”.
I’m currently using Chronical for Android for my streaming outside and inside my home, but it too has it’s issues, like not keeping track from one Android Device to another of my placement in a book. But it also requires another app to use. My main issue is why do I need another app or program running to listen to my media, when that was the reason for creating and continuing to make the best Media Server Program to begin with?
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This.
There isn’t that big of a disconnect between music and audiobooks. The difference is that an audiobook needs to remember what track you last listened to and where in that track you were. Plex even changed their Music agent to Musicbrainz, which is community-supported and supports adding audiobooks to its database.
Adding a resume feature at the album level–which is really the only “must have” aspect of this request–seems a rather minor thing to implement, especially compared to the major not-asked-for projects Plex has put their efforts into lately.
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Just wanted to say thanks for all the people who have contributed to this post and to ask a quick question. I’m a long time Plex user and just getting into audiobooks. I LOVE the idea of using Plex for audiobooks likely with Prologue. I just wanted to clarify that .m4b files are supported. I have a few .mp3 books that work well but I added a .m4b book yesterday that isn’t showing up in Plex. Just want to figure it out before I start adding a lot of content.
Again thanks!
I have just setup my library. 90%. of my library is .M4B and each book contain the original Audible tags. It works quite well.
I found that because Plex had eliminated the basic/premium option that the original setup instructions no longer work. If I scan my library with the agent set to “audiobooks” then the scanner is changed to “plex music scanner”. With this setting, I am finding that many books with multiple parts are not joined shown as one book. I had great success with the agent set to “plex music” which uses the “plex music” scanner. (confusing naming by Plex).
Because most of my books had the correct metadata only about 10% of my library needed updating with the audible agent. So now I am not using the audible agent but relying on manual local metadata tags.
My remaining big problem is that Plex refuses to display the “comment” field from the local tags. This field contains the publisher’s notes.
Since I do not get the “comments” using the “audible agent” either, I am not sure what is wrong.
The only way I can get the “comments” to display is by manually matching and updating metadata using the search option. I do not like this solution because I would like to keep all the data “local” (which makes it easier to move the library) and it would take me hours to do.
Someone above mentioned using the “review field” but I am not seeing this field in the mp3tag app.
Thanks for the help. I don’t know why my .M4B files weren’t working at first. They seem to be now so now I just have to decide which format I want to use and whether I want to bother with chapters.
Thanks!
Hi J…
I find the one of the advantages of the M4B format is that it can contain a lot of detailed info. about a book which MP3’s cannot. This works better for me so I am standardizing on M4B.
In my attempt to add “Local” descriptions to all my books I have found that the Tag Editor Kid3 is the only one that shows a field that Plex can read.
The field in Kid3 is called “Description” which is the field that Plex uses and calls “Review”. Using this Tag I was able to update all my M4Bs with a full description. I have turned off the “audible agent” and set to scanner and agent to “Plex Music”. Now I can easily backup/move the library without having to worry about the Plex database.
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This seem not to work with mp3 files. The tag field is named subtitle in mp3tag and other software
Right it has to be M4B and Kid3. I tried about six different programs and Kid3 was the only one that worked
“I find the one of the advantages of the M4B format is that it can contain a lot of detailed info. about a book which MP3’s cannot.”
I decided to share a shell script I wrote for me personally.
It converts a folder of .m4a files to a single chapterized .m4b file.
I’ve only tested it locally on my Mac, but it should work in most linux environments with bash and ffmpeg.
Hopefully it’s helpful to someone here.
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Thanks for the info on .m4bs a few posts back and the recent shell script. I will give it a try this weekend. Are the chapters based on file lengths or are the customizable? I am still trying to figure out a good way to add chapter information when I am creating .m4b files from audio CDs.
Again thanks!
Chapters in the script are based on the metadata pulled from each track.
chapter_start = sum of the duration of previous tracks
chapter_end = chapter_start + the duration of the track
for multi track chapters if the metadata title is set up like 01a - Title, 01b - Title
the script will detect this can keep moving the chapter_end until there is a new title.
It does this though pattern matching. It divides the above into 3 parts.
var1 = [ 01 ] (the digits of the chapter number)
var2 = [ b ] (any single character a-z or A-Z)
var3 = [ - Title ] ( lowercased version of the remaining string )
It then compares var1+var3
(if you have the word Chapter or Ch before the number, it discards it. this is a personal preference of mine, I hate when I can’t see the title of the chapter because it got pushed further off the screen by Chapter)
This can fix creation, but the data does have to be setup correctly.
You can check each individual file before the script in iTunes, or https://metaz.io
MetaZ can also has a “Chapter” tab so you can check the m4b
You can edit the title of the Chapter with it, however you can’t play each chapter, or edit the timecode.
I personally fix any errors with Rogue Amoeba | Fission: Fast & Lossless Audio Editing
You can export from fission to a chapterized AAC, and check that each chapter is in the correct spot.
If you were asking because you want to set the chapter length manually…
All the CD’s I own have a new track at the chapter mark.
Using fission you can move the chapter mark easily.
You could also edit with Garage band to the track split exact (don’t know if it supports chapter marks)
There are options when running the script - you can generate a metadata.txt file separate from joining the files.
You can manually edit this .txt file, Including the duration of each chapter.
You would have to do some math to get your timing right.
To help you out, you will need to use the timebase to calculate the timestamp (ts) time.
time_base=1/22050 means each digit is 22050th of a second…
duration = duration_ts / time_base
So if, in that timebase, we had a duration_ts of 792576 = 35.94490 seconds
792576 / 22050 = 35.944490 (rounded up)
Thanks so much! I looked up that fission app and it looks like it will work. I appreciate the help
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You can also easily move them with inAudible.
