@johnson.patrickw said:
What are people currently using to handle audiobooks since Plex support is lacking?
I’m on Android so I use Booksonic. It’s basically a subsonic fork for audiobooks. It works reasonably well. It remembers location, let’s me sync content to my phone, has variable speed playback and more. It’s not great about metadata and it’s a bit clunky at times. I’d definitely prefer a Plex implementation. But it works well for me in the meantime. The server component is free, but the app costs a little bit.
I’m guessing there is a similar app for iOS, but I don’t know about that.
I use the audible app for iOS, transferring the book to my phone using iTunes. I only use this method when using .m4b though, since it will pick up the embedded chapters (and rewind a few seconds on startup if app crashes). If I already have the book as mp3, then I just use plex and ensure that the file is broken up into small enough files so that losing my place is not that big of a deal…
I wish that the plex app had all of the features of the audible app- increasing playback speed is awesome too!
And then in plex I organize using the following fields
Album Artist = Series
Album = Book Title
Album Record Label = Author
Track = Book Title
Track Artist = Narrator
Artist Collections = Author
I can provide a more in-depth guide if anyone is interested.
By setting Plex up this way I can use the artist view in plex to view the series’s I have. If I switch to the Album view I can see each individual book. I can also filter by collection to see only a Authors work.
Plex has a long way to go. I have outlined the features I would like to see in a earlier post of this thread. I like how plex handles it now but there are still large gaps and issues that should be handled before plex becomes the audiobook powerhouse I see it being. Due to the limits of plex I am working on converting all of my books into one mp3 file. I am trying to find the best way to do this. Plex has been having issues reading the correct file length of the merged files.
Title - is the book title
Album - is the name of the series or the book (if its a stand alone book)
Artist - the author
Track - track number
Disc - there part in the series
Genre - the genre of the book, this can support more then one genre, and are seperate by ; or /
Composer - narrator
year - year the book is first published, i dont care about what year it was recorded
comment - is the book plot (but it is not displayed in emby or plex yet)
and it shows up like this
series are automatically grouped together
But one thing i dislike about plex so far, is it expects cd covers, but i prefer the book covers which is a different aspect ratio and cuts off parts of the image (as seen above)
But i would love if plex could support nfo metadata, because i have no idea how to group together series that are part of a larger series, such as the starwars series, and riftwar cycle by raymond e feist, which consists of multiple series inside a larger series/world
We have come a long way in making it more friendly to users that have audio-books on their servers, but we still have a long way to go. This function is a must for me as I use my plex to stream books while I drive all day at work.
This feature is very, very important to me. So much so that I was going to hold off on purchasing a PlexPass until they fixed this glaring shortcoming. However, a friend bought my PlexPass sub for the holidays – so I can’t vote with my feet, only my fingers.
@josiahesler said:
But one thing i dislike about plex so far, is it expects cd covers, but i prefer the book covers which is a different aspect ratio and cuts off parts of the image (as seen above)
Download the desired book cover
Open it in image editing software (eg. GIMP, which is free; don’t use MSPaint).
Resize the canvas, widening the smaller edge so that the canvas is square (ie. horizontal and vertical dimensions are the same)
Center the artwork in the middle of the image (can usually be done from the “Resize Canvas” dialogue window)
Export as .png (not .jpg).
Put image in the album’s folder, as poster.png (or poster-2,3,4, etc.)
Done. The cover should fit and you should have transparency on the sides.
But i would love if plex could support nfo metadata, because i have no idea how to group together series that are part of a larger series, such as the starwars series, and riftwar cycle by raymond e feist, which consists of multiple series inside a larger series/world
I don’t think you’re going to be able to do that. At best you’re probably going to have to group the smaller series into albums and then organize the larger group together by using “Sort Album” and sorting by Title.
I already added my +1 a long, long time ago, but I thought I’d stir the pot a little…
I don’t understand why audiobooks aren’t already included, as it would nearly complete Plex as a universal personal media manager. However, I’m content to wait so long as one question is answered:
Why? Why is it taking so long? Is there something running under the hood that we mortals aren’t aware of that is legitimately delaying development? Is it a legal constraint unique to audiobooks that prevents the feature from ever being made available?
I just want to understand the why. Because right now, I don’t, and it seems like an embarrassing oversight for Plex considering no other organization offers open-sourced audiobook management for phones.
I can’t believe a simple audiobook function hasn’t been added yet. Maybe even a simple hold my place bookmark function on the music. Also the E-reading on books and comics. If this was added to plex… I would be sooo happy.
@Domoel said:
+1 plz add native Audiobook support with variable speed, chapter recognition and save position of track.
Track saving is available in the music library however album position (you are on track 12 of 43) is not saved and m4b files are playable but the chaptering is not supported.
This is by far my most wanted wanted request at the moment. Please add full audiobook support with separate library, automatic file recognition (when set to audiobook), saving playback position, variable speed and possibility to add rhe book blurb (calibre queries amazon for that, plex could do that too)…
