Been using this guide successfully for audiobooks for a long time until recently where now it does not remember my location within a track (chapter). Not sure what happened but I have not made any changes. Anyone else having this issue? Looks like someone logged it here in December as well: Music Audiobook not remembering playback position. Starting over / Playback issues
What is the current proper naming format for books or radio shows consisting of multiple parts? I tried āBook Name - pt1.mp3ā and āBook Name_part1.mp3ā and neither one works. Every file is displayed as an individual album. Metadata is correctly reflecting the same albumā¦
Edit: Metadata has to include track number in it. Fixed. Works now.
I label mine as ..\[author]\[series] [series #] - [book]\[track] - [chapter #] - [chapter title].m4b
with the series name/number and/or chapter title optional depending on if they exist.
EDIT: In the above, it shows a āGeneralā, folder for my content because of Embyās ability to set different subfolder permissions for different profiles. In Plex, I mount all those arbitrary subfolders to the library rather than the parent āaudiobooksā folder. So pay no mind to the āGeneralā folder being there in my images because itās actually at the top level.
I havenāt been back to this topic in ages. Kind of a bummer that Plex still hasnāt added first-class support, but Iāve got a working setup and thought it might help peopleā¦
I have simple drag-and-drop batch scripts to convert Audible books (aax) into single M4B with chapter markers, using ffmpeg. If I have a set of MP3s from a CD, I use fre:ac, which also creates M4B with chapter markers. I touch up the metadata with mp3tag, which only takes a minute. The result goes into a āmusicā library in Plex, but donāt really use that for anything. I have the same directories hosted as a dumb filesystem index in IIS (yeah, I know, but itās already thereā¦) and I can just visit the server in any browser and download a book with a click.
On Android, I use Voice audiobook player, which is super simple and works well. My only gripe is that the downloaded files have to be manually placed into paths like /sd-card/Audiobooks/Some-Book/bookfile.m4b ā you canāt just dump all the files in one place. Otherwise, Iām pretty happy with the solution overall. (Of course, if Plex did add first-class support, Iād probably switch back.)
How did you use fre:ac to create a m4b with chapter markers? I am just starting to get around to ripping my audiobooks and am havenāt been able to find a good process for it yet.
I donāt think Iāve done a lot with the options in fre:ac, I just use the āadd folderā button to load a bunch of MP3s, then click āstartā, pick an output file name, and the resulting file has chapter markers. If the defaults donāt do that for you, let me know and Iāll dig into the settings Iām using.
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This is an important topic so am glad to see it still open. Is there a definitive way to get the book title to actually match to a database? Such as using a ID number like with The Movie Database?
Having just updated my Macās OS iāve been hit with the split out of audiobooks from iTunes into Books. So was hoping that Plex would come to the rescue again, ballsād up my first go and decide to RTFM. Reading around the subject I keep hearing the Plex are about to get rid of plugins. Do we know if this is going to kill the Agent (which i still canāt get working) in the near future? Also, if i kill my library so i can set it up correctly with these instructions can i keep the same name?
Plugin support ended in 2018 (!), but you can still install the audiobook agent.
What is the current way to use the audible agent? Because the plugin has ended and canāt select the agent when making a new library.
Plex has not altogether ended support for plugins. Plex has only discontinued the use of accessing plugins through its in-app Plugin āChannelsā directory. If a plugināsay the YouTube āchannelā pluginārequired the use of said directory, that plugin no longer works. The Audible Agent does not require that, and therefore is not affected by this change.
Now, with that being said, the current way to use the Audible Agent, assuming it is installed correctly, is to open your audiobook libraryās settings (Mouse over library name ā click 3 dots to right of library name ā Manage Library ā Editā¦ ā Advanced) and change the agent for your audiobook library to the āAudiobooksā option.
The Audiobooks Agent should also appear in the Agents submenu in your serverās Settings menu.
On my Debian-based server I cloned it into my Plugins directory, changed ownership and permissions and then restarted PMS:
cd /var/lib/plexmediaserver/Library/Application\ Support/Plex\ Media\ Server/Plug-ins/
sudo git clone https://github.com/macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle.git
sudo chown -R plex:plex Audiobooks.bundle/
sudo chmod 755 Audiobooks.bundle/Contents/Code/__init__.py
sudo systemctl restart plexmediaserver.service
If youāve copied it into your Plugins directory, restarted PMS and itās still not working then itās likely to be owned by root or __init__.py does not have execute permissions.
Recently set this up and wanted to suggest a few notes:
Notes on metadata: MP3TAG is a nice gui one, but for a cli option you can use mpgtx. Alternatively, once Plex has loaded the files you can just update the metadata through plex.
Notes on installing plugin: The following two links can help you find the right directory for where to install the plugin
Once you know where to install the plugin, you can follow this guide to install the plugin manually
Do not suggest this for two reasons.
- More time consuming than using MP3TAG.
- The metadata is not captured natively in the file, it is in the Plex database. You lose that database and you start all over.
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Add another one to the list of wishing Plex handled audiobooks better than it does. 
While I have installed the āplug-inā mentioned up thread Iām finding it is inconsistent on pulling in some of the audiobookās information. Namely the ārelease dateā and āpublisher summaryā from Audible.com and populating the fields āoriginal availableā and āreviewā fields in Plex. Anyone have any better workarounds to this? Manually editing each audiobook (due to shear number of books in my collection) in Plex would take waaaaay too long to be worth while.
Prior to using this plug-in Iāve been manually tagging (which I still do) the audiobooks using MP3Tag but that is limiting due to the limited metadata tags that Plex reads for music/audiobook files. Plex doesnāt pull in some of the metata fields with itās metadata option that Iād like it to display. Namely the correct date and comments (book summary) that Iāve been tagging my audiobook files with (using MP3Tag).
I downloaded an audiobook from Audible to my PC today, and it downloaded as .mp4. I donāt know what Audible means to accomplish by doing this, because it still contains the same encrypted AAC content.
Your decryption software of choice may be confused by this file being labeled as .mp4, but if you rename it to .aax, it should decrypt as per usual.
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Well, I downloaded The Hobbit by Andy Serkis from Audible just now because apparently I never added it to Plex or Emby. And it downloaded as .aax. So whatever Audible did to change audiobooks to download as mp4 on the site, they changed it back.
EDIT: Apparently they download as .mp4 in Firefox, but as .aax in other (Chromium?) browsers. In any event, if you rename the .mp4 files to .aax, decryption software works as normal.
Feel like Iāve set up Plex properly following Seanaps guide, but this Bookcamp and Chronicle donāt see my Audiobooks library. Looks fine as best I can tell in the Plex app, and in Prologue on IOS, but I really need Android to workā¦ Any ideas?
@SoCalLonghorn Can you get to your Plex server while outside of your network (eg. on mobile while using data)?
Absolutely. Just canāt get Bookcamp or Chronicle to show libraries because they require mobile access to be enabled, even though Prologue doesnāt.
