Once upon a time I had an mp3 system in my car called a Phatbox. The management software that came with it had its difficulties, but when all was said and done, the Phatbox handled audiobooks so seamlessly that I never had to think about it. It interfaced with the stock stereo in certain cars and emulated a CD changer, so every playlist appeared to be a CD.
The two things that the Phatbox system did that Plex does not, which I believe made it capable of handling audiobooks so well are these:
It recognized .m3u playlist files. You could import individual music tracks, or complete albums/audiobooks by simply importing the .m3u file.
Each playlist had settings, one of which was āEnable playlist resume.ā This allowed the Phatbox to remember which file, and the place in the file, where playback left off.
There are days when I wish I still had that car, solely for the Phatbox, which was discontinued I donāt know how many years ago, but the management software doesnāt support versions of Windows past Windows 2000. My new 2015 car with the whizbang stereo seems positively primitive compared to the Phatbox.
@sGarver said: @mdnitoil
So would you agree that how Plex handles tracking progress (and watched/unwatched) for TV Shows would be good for The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre?
Particularly that show! What is it, like 1400 episodes?
Iāve played with a couple of ways to make this work in plex. Changeing m4b to m4v worked best for me, but eventually I switched to cloudbeats for audiobooks on my iphone. Booksonic is good if you are on android. Iād love to see plex add an audiobook section.
I also like the tracking of the position in audiobooks (or podcasts). It remembers the last position in the iOS App but when I switch to chromecast it begins new ā¦ hope this is only bug and could be fixed in future releases. I have the same problem also with the new Sonos integration.
@mcmasc78 This appears to be a client issue. Between my android phone and the Roku (Plex Pass) app, tracking is working. As the developers get it incorporated into the other apps, Iām sure it will be addressed.
LOL wow it seems this was a very recently added feature. I just decided today to rebuild my music library as a Premium Library and noticed this option. So turned right around and rebuilt my Podcast library as well.
This would be awesome! I use Plex right now for AudioBooks when I am traveling. It is already functional but it would be so nice to have real audiobook support!
I canāt get it working on iOS, I have synced the content to my phone - is that the same as what you guys are doing?
I basically tested it with a single book, synced it, listened to the first 10 minutes then next time I tried it just began from the start - no prompt to resume
@Jalbre said:
FWIW, this feature, while amazing, would be DOA for me without also having variable speed playback.
Variable speed playback could be fixed simply by allowing access to the synced data files on Android. Want extremely specific audiobook features? The data isnāt enough to worry about on a book by book basis - sync all you want: But we have to have access to the data folder to be able to have any kind of flexibility with our synced content. Weāre not all on iOS.
This is incredible to see the progress! Iāve been building up my movie/tv library, but have so many audiobooks and would love to be able to stream from Roku, then switch to iPhone when travelling. I never thought this day would come, but it looks at least more functional than ever before, so hopefully this momentum continues! Thanks Plex Dev Team!!
This works very well if you have a live connection to the server such as the Web or streaming from the server, but it doesnāt appear to work at all for synced content to iOS at least. I havenāt tried syncing the audiobooks to another platform, but I can switch between my live server connection where it picks right up from where it left off and then to my synced content of the same file and it starts over. Can the knowledge of positioning for the files be sycned between platforms too? That would make this bulletproof. You guys rock!
This doesnāt work for me for syncād content on the latest versionā¦ even when I have a ālive connectionā. I setup a new library for spoken word content, dropped MP3s downloaded from LibriVox in there and then started playing the book. It does not remember any position of any of the files whether I am on my network or off my network. I think this is because I have āprefer synced contentā chosen.
Plex is quite painful for audiobooks and their focus seems to be on other things right now. The implemented feature seems like an afterthought; possibly to click āresetā on this thread or say that it was implemented in 2016ā¦ who knows. I use BookMobile for audiobooks on iOS and it works really well until Plex can implement it properly.
First Take is done - Plex remeber position of audio tracks
How about remember the position of an album?
a ālittleā Step and weāve a nice Feature using audiobooks
Yes. Remembering position across an album is important. I have my books broken into hour long tracks and this is still a step behind Google Play Music which already provides this.
In addition I have 0 ability to remember playback on my android device it seems. The playback position will transfer if I start it on my android and pick it up on my other devices. However if I start the file again on my android device it starts from the beginning of the track. Which as you can imagine loses my previously saved position for my other devices.
