Audiobooks support

General Discussions
1

Hello,

Is there an ETA about support for Audiobooks library ? There is music but the feature doesn’t really work. It should almost be like Movie.

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2

@wonay said:
Hello,

Is there an ETA about support for Audiobooks library ? There is music but the feature doesn’t really work. It should almost be like Movie.

Plex never announces its intentions or timetable for anything until it actually happens. However I have mostly solved my audiobook support issues with Plex.

First a basic music, not advanced, library is what I use. Be sure you set the library in its advanced settings to “Store track progress.”
I have used a merge utility to make all my audiobooks single mp3 files.
I have the books in a structure where each author has his/her own subfolder under the main audiobook folder.
I use a Fire TV (it is great that I finally found a use for my Fire that it serves very well) as the client for my audiobook library. Its audio output feeds a whole house audio system.
The real advantage of this system is a nearly seamless integration with Alexia. I have several Echo devices scattered around my house. Once I got my Fire and Plex fully set up and I start a book anywhere in my house I can say “Alexia (or Echo) play” or “Alexia pause” and Alexia will perform exactly that action on my Fire TV. This is not playback through my Echo devices, it is simply using those devices to control my Fire TV.
I have not had any issues where the playback stops or refuses to play or any other problem with it running continuously for weeks. The Plex server has even been rebooted a couple of times while playback was paused and there were no problems.

While my setup is not full support for audiobooks it is pretty good and really all I need.

Oh, I access the audiobook library on my Fire TV through the folder view and that works very well. I just wish that the play next functionality would follow the folder order when the folder view is being used but it does not so I cannot use that functionality and I have to access my Fire TV to start a new book after one ends.

3

Although I’ve had decent success with the same setup you’re describing Elijah_Baley, I believe that there are two fairly simply features that would greatly improve user experience:

  1. Add the ability to use the On Deck feature so that books in progress can be accessed without having to relocate them in the library if you switch to another media item on the device playing the book.
  2. Add the ability to set the Mark Completed percentage to 100%. It’s possible to set this to 95% with Tautulli, but with some longer books, that can still leave a decent portion unplayed if you change to another media item.

If you or anybody else has a workaround for either/both of these, I’d be very interested in them, but these are the simplest changes I can think of to make Plex a viable player for audiobooks.

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4

Just want to chime in and agree with everything posted.
I’m trying to use Plex for Audiobooks and would really like more control.

  1. Mark each track as played on multi-track audiobooks.
  2. Fiction/Non-Fiction would be a great divider, then after that some genres.
  3. Ditto with the On Deck.
  4. I’d also love a Listen Next playlist so I can keep a queue of what I want to listen to in the future.

Its great being able to stream 100s of audiobooks from my phone wherever I am.
Thx

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