Using plexamp and when listening to an audiobook, it appears to forget where I last left off. What I usually do when listening to a book, is pause it and swipe the app closed. I may come back hours later and listen to music or something else. But when go back to the audiobook, the position is not saved even though, on plex server, I have “store track progress” ticked. However, if I go to my windows app, play the book, stop it, play something else, stop it, then go back to the book, the book resumes from where I last left off. This makes me believe it is a flaw in the app. I suspect it might be because there does not appear to be a way to stop an audio track from playing in the app, only pause it.
Long press on Pause will perform a real Stop in Plexamp.
Keep in mind that it currently applies the same rules for saving the playback position as for movies:
- file needs to be played for more than 1 minute
- file needs to be played less than 90% of its duration
Plexamp ain’t that great for audiobooks. I recommend you use Prologue app (Apple) or Chronicle (Android).
I really struggled with audiobooks on Plex until I started using Prologue. It is the best $5 or $6 I ever spent in the Apple store. My brother uses Chronicle and it works very well as well. Lots of features specific to audiobooks and never had a problem with saving track progress.
I’m on Android so I can’t speak to Prolouge but I’ve used Chronicle and its terrible. Much worse than Plexamp and Chronicle has a paid tier that has not been updated in a long time.
Oh. Good to know. Thanks!
My brother uses the paid tier of Chronicle and he is very happy with it. I wonder if it may be a device issue?
Not a device issue. Chronicle is not a terrible app (as I wrote above), the feature set is limited, there is the issue of remembering where your last position in a book when using different devices (hopefully fixed with the long press stop on Plexamp), the interface is kinda basic, etc. I am hoping Plexamp will remain in active development so bugs are addressed and new features added. As of right now there doesn’t appear to be a better offering for audiobooks for Android.
It will!
Unfortunately I am still seeing this issue with my audiobooks. Even after stopping a playback , when I return to it days later plexamp appears to have forgotten my previous position. Frustrating. Could it be because I am switching between libraries (folders)?
Does your audiobook library have Store Track Progress enabled?
Yes it does.
I know you don’t want to hear this, but…Chronicle.
Unfortunately, Chronicle is no better at this. Just look at the comments on the play store page.
Well…comments are not all of the experiences. My brother has been using Chronicle for 4 months with zero issues; not to say his experience trumps others, but rather the comments are not everything.
At the end of the day you only have so many options. I guess just do what you think is best.
I don’t know how we got into this back and forth about Chronicle, maybe you own stock in the company, I don’t know. My experience with the app is my own not based on what others have said (although other experiences are useful).
All that being said, I am here about plexamp. I am still unclear if the devs are seeing this problem, if it is a known issue or not. I don’t know if the problem is in the app or server side. Perhaps its the file format? Who knows?
Ultimately, I can only report my experience and hope someone addresses it and move on.
I for one would love to hear more details on this one. AFAIK if the library has Store Track Progress on, you should be able to return to the item days later and have it resume.
A good check is to go to the web UI and Get Info on the chapter in question, View XML and see if there’s a viewOffset attribute. This should be updated during playback and stay there.
Thanks elan. On server side it appears to be updating correctly. It’s app side there appears to be an issue. I will run some more tests and report back.
So i found something interesting. It appears that if (using a single account) you start a playback of the book on one device, pause and then play it back on another, plex creates two instances each with different time stamps (see attached). One other thing of note: the two devices are galaxy s8+ and galaxy note 10. Both are running 3.7.0. However the Note has a 30 second skip button, the s8 does not. Are these things to be expected?
Update: Not sure if this is expected, but if you play an audiobook, pause and then swipe the app away, the book shows as paused in the Now Playing section of the dashboard. This is why you can have two different time stamped instances.
This is expected, and the most recent timestamp wins.
One of them has the Music Quick Skip option enabled.
It will timeout and disappear after about 180 seconds.
1 Like
The Galaxy 10, which was started after the Android was paused and closed, started at 4:59:27 11 minutes behind the S8+. Why not have the phone furthest into the book (in this case at 5:10:04) win? Or ask would you like to continue at 5:10:04?
Got it.
Is there a way to change this timeout in settings?
