It would be great to have Audiobook Sections which show and sync the progress through the "On Deck" feature like the video sections already do.
+1
It would be awesome to stream / sync my magazines to my phone or pc !
I'm sad to see this hasn't gotten a single official response from the Plex developers.
This feature has been suggested for the first time about three years ago. Nowadays lots of the Plex users have tablets or smartphones.
Adding this feature would be awesome. :)
I use Calibre at this moment, but the server is a pain in the ass to work with. I use the server for other users to download my books and comics. I installed Owncloud on my ubuntu laptop and I put a small part of my collection on that so I can access and download those files more easily.
The biggest issue I'm having is bookmarks and read-status. Now I have to manually edit my books and comics in Calibre when I'm done reading, I can't even do this in the server :s
I also use multiple devices and it would be great to sync those bookmarks. (in iBooks, this can be done, but this can't be done with my comic reader).
Plex would be really great if they integrate this feature! :) One media server for all our media and for those who don't want/need this feature: they just don't have to add a section for those files in their library.
Thumbs up for audiobooks
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+1 I would certainly pay for this as reading is as much a source of entertainment for my family as movies/tv shows
This would really add another layer of awesome for plex.
Saving position of pdfs / comics / manga ect while reading on plex would be awesome.
I think they will as it's one of the coolest features of XMBC to play video rar and zip files. Think of the hard drive space that could be saved!
If we are talking media files (not books), no hard drive space would be saved by using rar or zip. At least not much, in some cases it may be entireley possible that it needs more space. The reason is that common media files (like h.264 videos or JPEG pictures) are already compressed pretty tight. You would gain very little to nothing when compressing them again.
Actually, RAR/ZIP file support was available in Plex many years ago (before the Alexandria release) and was removed on purpose.
If we are talking media files (not books), no hard drive space would be saved by using rar or zip. At least not much, in some cases it may be entireley possible that it needs more space. The reason is that common media files (like h.264 videos or JPEG pictures) are already compressed pretty tight. You would gain very little to nothing when compressing them again.
Actually, RAR/ZIP file support was available in Plex many years ago (before the Alexandria release) and was removed on purpose.
I think the fact that it's RAR/ZIP makes it confusing for people to understand they're not used in video to have savings but to split large files into smaller chunks. This is done for two reasons: To facilitate transfer in protocols that benefit from multi-part connections (streaming from FTP, Usenet, Web File Repositories) and to facilitate storage in filesystems that don't hold large files easily (FAT16, FAt32, etc, have limits on size, players may have these limits as well).
In all cases RAR/ZIP are used without actual compression (called "STORE" compression, which is none at all).
People who want RAR/ZIP play either misunderstand these to provide savings in space or download multi-part videos and find it cumbersome to "uncompress" into the real, final video.
+1
Google Play allows me to upload my own books as well as read and sync them on mobile and desktop.
Sorry, no need for Plex Reader.
This feature might be even better if it worked in a similar way to Calibre where it would let you sync books to your devices and pick which EBook Reader to sync it to.
Any movement on this?
XMBC used to read CBR's and that would be a great addition to Plex, books are media too and should get the same love!
Agreed.. I was thinking of getting into mangas (my friend keeps bugging me to) and it would be sweet to be able to have how however many gigs of storage used on the server and just stream it to a tablet or sync ect.
Update: Was in informed that plex is intagrating xbmc. If this is true they will already have full zip/rar/cbz/cbr suport. This makes epub and pdf the only files left to suport. I would still like to see a books section with or without epub and pdf to view my comics.
Could you ellaborate on this? I don't think Plex is integrating XBMC in this way. The PHT has always shared code with XBMC but PMS doesn't and couldn't. The support you desire would need to exist in PMS so nothing from XBMC could be used there.
XBMC's code, to my knowledge, is under a license that forbids it to be used in PMS, so it couldn't be leveraged that way either.
I'm all for this proposal, but I don't think it's being promoted in a way the Plex team would see any benefit implementing it.
I'm posting it here because forum rules forbid me to post duplicate items, but I think the description of this thread could be clearer to the Plex team and to would-be supporters. I'd also suggest getting rid of the poll, remind visitors that they should vote by clicking "LIKE" in the first post and that "+1" posts do nothing to improve the chances of this happening.
To me, the "pitch" for this would be very different. The first paragraph hits it in the nail, but then digresses into revenue and store ideas which, I think, brings the whole thing down.
I see the pitch simple, the post below is what I would've made into a new post, had not one already been in place:
Plex should support eBooks, Comics and Magazines natively, to complete its offering of being this generations Digital Hub platform, filling the hole the post-pc revolution is making bigger every day.
-Plex reunites different media types, to be consumed in an organized way
-Plex aims to work in a multitude of devices, tracking the media library usage across devices.
-Plex currently tracks media metadata, and is able to use this to allow consumption sequentially, in lists, etc.
-Plex tracks consumption status, letting you stop and continue in another time or device.
-Plex is being used a lot in portable devices. With Plex Media Server taking care of the libraries, clients can be Tablets, Smartphones and Laptops.
-With MyPlex, media becomes ubiquitous, available anywhere.
-With Plex Sync media becomes portable, available offline in a smart way.
Plex has built the ultimate Digital Hub, the gap that is larger every day more tablets and smartphones and smart TVs are sold. The real gap out there is that the devices we're using to consume media can't hold that media anymore in a practical way, and no platform has yet grouped it in a way that replaced the original "Digital Hub" idea where a PC was central to everything. Plex converts a home server into not only what hosts the files but what serves the media.
In this, Plex is currently tracking and serving three of the major media types (four if you split TV and movies), briding the usability hell that was tracking your shared videos and music. This usability hell still exists, for more media types:
-Books: Commonly in ePUB, TXT, PDB, PDF and MOBI formats (at the very least). Users have to use monstrosities like Calibre and make do with mediocre transfer methods to keep the books in their devices. Forget about reading status across devices. Metadata sometimes present, usually not (but obtainable from sites like Goodreads)
-Comics: Commonly in a compressed archive format (ZIP and RAR, as extensions CBZ and CBR are the most common ones). Metadata usually not present, but obtainable through ComicVine's API. When present the formats used are either ComicBookInfo's JSON in the ZIP/RAR comments of the file or ComicRack's ComicInfo.xml inside the archive. Programs like Comictagger currently can search comicvine and tag with either format.
-Magazines: A mix of books and Comics in that they're sequential but formats are usually PDF.
Clients would decide if they support the new media types, and Plex Media Server would serve the media in a standardized format regardless of source. I'd propose this format to be PDF only because it's known and there are reader libraries that can be used, but it could easily be ePub for text-based eBooks and specialized image serving for Magazines and Comics (or books that may not be convertable to ePub, like PDFs).
PMS would track viewing status by storing the page (in graphical formats) or the topmost paragraph displayed (for text). It would also keep track of reading status for series (comics, magazines).
If collections are ever added properly, they could also contain varied comics or books that are part of sagas.
2 Likes
This would be great!
It's funny how people have forgotten why large movies are in RAR pieces to begin with. The whole discussion about compression on RAR files is hilarious as it's based on made-up reasoning.
Players play RAR and ZIP files not because of compression, but because they come as multi-part RAR/ZIP files from the source that initially uploads it. Large files come in multi-part RAR files for several reasons (depending on the scene, type of file, etc.)
1.-Because it's uploaded as it's being recorded, and parts are chopped off and uploaded as they're being streamed. This is automated and is how TV Series in HD are shared.
2.-Because it's shared in places that make it easier to do multi-part files (which minimize problems and errors and maximize multi-peer sharing with more basic protocols like FTP), where files can start being distributed before the whole file is complete.
Keep in mind, because it's important, that both RAR and ZIP are used in "STORE" compression mode, which means no attempt is made at compressing. RAR and ZIP (and actually more RAR than anything) is used not as a compressor, but as a packager (because, again, it supports multi-part on-the-fly chopping of a file, even as it's being written).
Now, players started supporting ZIP/RAR files started supporting it for a single, simple reason: Because people are lazy and didn't want to have to uncompress the files to end up with the same disk space used, for stuff maybe they'd see once or twice.
Then when HD files came up, people discovered a lucky effect of multi-part files: You can store multi-gigabyte files in FAT32 volumes (which can't hold anything above 4GB), which made it easy to use the most common disk filesystem in the world to move files around.
For these reasons, multi-part RAR carved a solid and profound niche in these set-ups, and won't go away soon.
But with it came ignorance by people who couldn't figure out why RAR was being used, and assumed it was due to compression. And on one side the proponents defend the format on merits it doesn't have and the haters complain about the format on arguments that have no bearing with reality.
I, personally, don't like RARs and always "uncompress" them. But I know where they come from and why they exist, and I'm OK with it.
Also, to add to this as it at least explains the majority of it, multi-part RAR or zip files ALSO give you the ability to add nice and easy CRC error correction. Of course with faster and faster broadband connections this is not so much an issue anymore, but especially those on DSL connections benefit the most [and any connection can benefit from this it was just REALLY important during the days of dial-up Modems] wherein as you transfer a file it is open to possible degradation or transfer errors [due to many different factors I won't sit here and list but things like a flaky connection that keeps re-connecting or one that suffers from many re-transmits (ie a mobile data connection)]
You can "rebuild" a multi-part file set if you say are missing one of the pieces or if one of them was corrupted during transfer using the CRC data [if you see an SFV file and wondered what those were in RAR and ZIP land this is it], you can open winrar and look under tools and see the repair archive feature there? This can be used on any archive really, BUT only those that chose to add extra CRC info [usually set as a percentage of the overall size of the source media being archived in the set] in SFV files really can give you the ability to reconstruct that source media if you are missing parts [obviously the more you are missing the less chance you have enough CRC to re-build the entire source you can't grab 1 file of a 50 file set and assume you can just rebuild using the CRC info included it will usually break this apart across all the files of the set so the more files you have the more CRC info you have to try with.
Sorry got a little long winded trying to explain that, but in short multi-part archives [especially if trying to save bandwidth] help in that if you have a transmission issue [you got cut off while downloading and the FTP server has no resume capability or you got the archive and find you have 1 or a couple parts corrupted, or you have a not so nice connection that can cause problems in downloads]; You can then go back and only download the parts you missed due to the issue or you could choose to re-build the archived media using the CRC info in the remaining files if you got enough of the CRC info transferred to do so.
These days with a half descent machine you can unarchive even quite large files in only a couple of minutes so personally I can understand why Plex would not want to go through all the trouble of getting the code to unarchive things, then get the binaries licensed [RAR and ZIP are both commercial really with only limited open source options], and then get it so that everything in-place would be quite an under taking when really you just could even set a temp folder for extractions as a checked folder for a media section and set the auto folder watcher to enabled so that you basically set the archive to extract in the temp file that is connected to the needed media section and once that completes Plex should auto see the new content and auto scan it in to the server library without you doing anything else [aside from possibly renaming it quickly if you care to have it in a metadata enabled section].
Glad to see someone else knows why archives are used and that it is not to save space. You can save a little tiny bit of space even setting the archive to max compression so over a HUGE collection you are only saving maybe 100M and not to mention the time if you clicked to play an archived folder you would then have to wait while the whole thing unarchives first then loads up then streams or even using something like FUSE mount then you would be reading an archive directly and that would be a MAJOR CHOKEPOINT for server performance when trying to play something that is archived and uncompressing it on the fly.
All that being said I am interested in streaming AudioBooks as it is nice to have a streaming server that can remember where I left off in an MP3 so I can comeback and just continue where I left off, but I am going to try to play with MP3 tags and using a seperate Music section for my AudioBooks and see how it goes because the built-in web player and the ability to remember where I left off in a file with Plex would be just TOTALLY AWESOME to leverage with all my audio books.
I will look online to see if there is a site who handles Audiobook type metadata maybe we can just adapt the Music section type with only a few minor tweaks to become a new audio book section type where it can at least handle only the tag info locally maybe if no metdata site is available for scraping. That way it would be nice to have things like author instead of artist and book title instead of album title [little things that really I could get around but I have users that are going to gripe about the little things and it is a just a nice bit of polish to have it calling the fields the correct thing :-) ], but even if all I can do is a separate music section with meta scraping disabled and just use PuddleTag [MP3 Tag for Linux BEST BATCH MP3 tag handler IMHO can even embed the album art in to the tag using these utils so I don't have album art floating around in directories it is just embedded in each MP3 (yes you can embed multiple images if say you do scans of your CD books and want all the inserts I just maintain album covers personally). The ability to adjust multiple tags at once is just mandatory (I could not imagine changing the album name on each file of a 50 song CD one at a time I would never be finished LoL)] then that should work if I can figure out a uniform way to nail down the tags... .
This will be an awesome feature. Can wait!!
It would be great to have such features
