+1 for this. The ability to resume audiobooks would be a real benefit to me.
I just want a resume feature. Remember where in the audio you stopped listening to and BAM audio books work. Call them musicā¦I dont care. Just remember where I stopped listening.
Just wanted to say that as a programmerā¦ This is not a hard thing to do, specifically because theyāve already developed the tools for other containers. IF the features is actively being worked AND it is taking this long then there is no other explanation than they must be building a new library function, trying to interface with a new scrapper or build a new scrapper utility specifically for audiobooks, or they are partnering with someone such as audible competition to make audiobooks a new market in plex. I donāt understand the secrecy around the topic but I venture to say that if they are actively working on it then it will be huge and if it is not a huge update then they probably are not ACTIVELY working on it but rather it is on a list of ācrap to appease plex pass subscribersā sometime before the year ends.
Well, I canāt wait to have this feature on Plex, but for the time being, I found āListen Audiobook Playerā on the playstore. I download whatever book i want to listen to from my dropbox to my phone and use the app to play it.
@senigami Thanks for the tip. This sounds like the best workaround to keep it in the Plex universe
Every audiobook player that Iāve used has variable playback speed. Will variable speeds be supported with the audiobook feature? If not, then I donāt think Iāll be using it.
ughā¦ I just want the resume featureā¦ I hate skipping through the track every time I re-open my app.
@openam said:
Every audiobook player that Iāve used has variable playback speed. Will variable speeds be supported with the audiobook feature? If not, then I donāt think Iāll be using it.
Maybe we could ask devs to add the one simple fix to make audiobooks work. Later we can bug them for other enhancements. If we can get audio to remember last played position, then boom, audiobooks.
Add my name to the list of those wanting this featureā¦ Please PLEX, add a resume.
Okay I know this post is a prime candidate for tl;dr but it just had to be said (based mostly on comments from other threads) :)>-
I know that a resume feature is supposedly in the works and to all of us, who are not writing the code, it seems as simple as; asking the user if they would prefer to resume or play from the beginning if an āEnable Resumeā box is ticked under the Library Settings for audio files. Perhaps there is a bit more to it than just adding a resume option. For better or for worse Plex authors do not push out half-assed features and it may take time to get it right due to some earlier programming decisions that are making a resume feature difficult now. As a programmer myself I understand the plight of something that should be simple but instead is terribly complicated due to how things were set up in the past when things were moving in a different direction.
However, it seems much more likely that this particular item is just too low on the priority list to get the needed development time. Like it or not the development wind is blowing in other directions like the new virtual reality video, as VR is considered to be highly profitable industry in the immediate future. It is painfully obvious that Plexās major focus is on video before audio and will always take the driverās seat when it comes to product feature development. Plus there is the recent focus on making Plex available on as many platforms as possible.
As much as we all wish for Plex to implement the resume feature, I wouldnāt hold my breath for it any time soon. Especially for having audio book support; this would require media scraping for it to be done right. And we know that Plex will either release it right or not at all. Iāve actually built a media scraper web page for myself which parses the audio Meta data and does a lookup on goodreads as well as Audible to gather information, covers, play time, and more. I use it to help rename and organize my books so I know what kind of effort it takes to really do it correctly. I would love to give it to Plex to help speed things along but contact with admins is virtually impossible and I doubt they would take any code from some random developer that wasnāt created in-house.
Some people have referred to suggestions like mine or @Elijah_Baley as the work of āWorkaround Evangelistsā and that āwe shouldnāt have toā or it isnāt a solution and it should ājust workā. While we all agree we would wish for it to be a certain way; the truth is that it isnāt here yet and may not be for quite some time, even years. Whining and complaining that we donāt want to have to make temporary adjustments will not change the fact that we only have what we have for now. āWorkaround Evangelistsā like me are trying to provide the simplest solution to provide a service for something that does not exist at present. I think calling it evangelism is a bit strong as in no way am I suggestion that I would rather have the workaround than a fix. However I would also prefer having a fix to nothing at all.
The work around method from my post may be slightly more involved than @Elijah_Baley 's simple renaming of the file but it also is the most compatible as it ensures working on all devices. If a simple rename works for you then go for it. If you have another method that you discover that is even easier than what is suggested I would LOVE to hear about it and possibly use it instead. To all of you who are begging and wishing that this feature was in now because you āabsolutely need it,ā and yet are not willing to try one of these work-arounds, I can only say that you must not need it as much as you say you do because neither of these Band-Aid set-ups require more than a couple of minutes of your time and actually work quite well. I know that the phone screen must stay on for it to work but it is set to blank to simulate off as much as possible to not drain your battery or burn in the screen.
Eventually someday, hopefully soon, Plex will release a resume or Audio Book option and none of this will be necessary. But until then we do what we can and work together in communities like these to find a way of limping along for now. Hopefully these types of discussions will eventually catch the eye of one of the developers and help move things along. Until then letās work together to find ways of making things work and perhaps help influence the programmers to pick up an idea or two.
Writing another post does not show plex that you want this feature, please go back and like the original post to make it more prominent. This feature is already on Plexās feature request list 3 times, please go to those threads and like the original post to make it gain even more priority. Here are the two threads with the most priority likes so far, voting on these will be the most beneficial:
@BrodericKlemetson
Great comment, also thank you for posting links as well. Hopefully everyone can take your advice and bump this up.
Audio books are now mostly supported.
You may want to have a look at this thread, beginning with
It seems to have finally gotten the attention of the developers and we even have one making comments about it. To sum it up, you can turn on the remembering of position in the advanced tab but it still marks complete at 90%. They are aware of that and working on it.
Awesome, will be testing in on our road trip!!
is it normal that when I use synced audiobook on my ios device an I close the app completly in background the resuming position is lost, but when Iām listening is as a stream the resuming position is saved?
Most of my audiobook cds I converted in m4b an they are working
Greeds
Any news? Please?
Any information about this feature?
Just waiting for resume, nowā¦
It seems to me we need a whole new library type here, Audiobooks. Thatās because these are new types of objects that share characteristics of others. For examples, they need to be able to:
- Resume on all platforms (video)
- Show static cover artwork (music)
- Play on mobile with the screen off (music)
- Mark as played (video)
- Use square cover images (music)
Theyāre a bit like albums, in that often Audiobooks are not just one file but broken into chapters. The difference being that Plex will need to keep track of which ātrackā (chapter) you are currently on of that album and resume from there, having marked previous ones as played. Iām sure there are other features (e.g. bookmarking) and fields (e.g. Narrator) this new type would have too. Seems to me the Audible client serves as a good example.
So far, Iāve only managed by creating a standard Music type library and joining chapters together into one large file, using ffmpeg, because the āresumeā feature is working for me on a per track basis on Mac and Android, though not on Samsung TV client. I tried encoding as videos too as mentioned before but this seems best to me until the type suggested is created. Interested in othersā views too, and in whether the team agree/have made any advance on this. 
Where is this setting? Is it something that is only available to Plex Pass members or all Plex users? I have added my entire iTunes Audiobook folder to Plex (which means that all audiobooks are iTunes formatted as .m4b --these should retain their playback position in most apps) but none hold their position.
@senigami said:
Audio books are now mostly supported.
You may want to have a look at this thread, beginning with
http://forums.plex.tv/discussion/comment/1220998/#Comment_1220998
It seems to have finally gotten the attention of the developers and we even have one making comments about it. To sum it up, you can turn on the remembering of position in the advanced tab but it still marks complete at 90%. They are aware of that and working on it.
