+1 Just added all mine and would like this.
+1. The audiobook book section with a resume where you left off or bookmark. Much desired.
Almost 2 years after starting this thread I'm sad to see that this still doesn't exist.
Almost 2 years after starting this thread I'm sad to see that this still doesn't exist.
I have only been using Plex for about a year but I have come to a few conclusions (guesses) about priorities. From those it seems that Plex development ranks media types in order of importance as:
1. Standard TV and Movies
2. Music
3. Home type video.
4. Pictures
5.
6,
7. ---- Other things that might be useful in Plex
8.
9.
10. Audio books
11. Written books and comic books and other printed type media rendered electronically.
That is to say that few people have any interest in audiobooks and even fewer in written type of media. It is not that Plex ignores those of us interested in the written word it is that they prioritize their efforts based on actual number of interested users and people read (or listen to audiobooks) a lot less that people watch video or listen to music.
It took some effort but I convinced my granddaughters that the pictures are better in books than movies and now they ignore their parents by reading instead of watching so much TV :) but most folks will not expend the effort to allow books to work their magic preferring to have their visual and auditory systems bombarded by entertainment rather than actually using their brain to absorb it.
Of course this means that Plex puts anything related to audiobooks at a very low priority and I doubt they will change that as they do not see the reading crowd as a revenue stream of any importance.
That is why I have gone to the effort of incorporating a lower powered computer running MediaMonkey and the MediaMonkey Android remote control into my whole house system. My eyes are failing so I can no longer read comfortably but with that set up I get to read several books each month and my need for reading is filled.
I wish, as I have stated before, that Plex would fully support audiobooks as it would simplify my setup quite a bit but I have come to accept that that is quite unlikely to happen so I will live with the complexities my current setup has.
I have to admit that I no longer use Plex, despite buying a Lifetime Plex Pass. I bought the Pass as I felt projects like this need supporting. I still do.
The reasons for discontinuation of use are manifold, but prioritising the first couple -
*MY INITIAL CHOICE* of NAS hardware (ie, the PMS dev's were NEVER at fault). I have a couple of truly lovely Synology NAS's that are for home use, but neither really have the processing power to make PMS useful over the Internet. This partly because Synology use processors in their lower-spec machines, that are 'good enough' for most NAS jobs. Also, I cannot afford to buy or run a dedicated PC/NUC in order to make the media available over the Internet (again, this is my fault and not the dev's).
Secondly -
I did start using PMS to stream Audiobooks over 3G as I travel a lot. Having to restart a book from scratch (an unchaptered book), pretty much killed it for me. Replaying a 4 minute music track over again is no biggie, but trying to delve through an 11 hour audio book to find where you left off, just kills it for me.
And before anyone goes on about PMS being all about Videos and Music - It is currently marketed as Plex Media Server, and not Plex Video & Music Server. ;)
I'm just thinking that it shouldn't be that much of a leap in programming to change what music track you were listening to, to *where* in the music track you were.
Without adding all the indexing required for Audiobooks, that would suite me fine.
If it does this now, I'll wind my neck in, and offer my profound thanks...
I currently use Synology's Audio Station to pull off this trick. Admittedly, it only remembers the position of the last audiobook/music track you were listening to, but it means I no longer have to carry my whole library around with me. The downside is that the book titles are truncated on the display in the non-tablet versions of the mobile Apps, but other than that, it works. Reliably.
Personally, I would be happy if they:
1.) remembered the position of the audiobook
2.) Supported the .m4b file extension (what Chapter & Verse outputs to).
Support of the .aa (audible audiobooks format) would be nice But I could do without.
Personally, I don't care about a metadata scanning agent. I use iTunes for my audiobooks right now and if Plex doesn't see what I've already entered, I'll happily enter it all manually.
I'd love to see the audiobook bookmark feature too, please. Thank you.
+1
I have been waiting on this enhancement ever since I got my plex account (well over a year). I listen to quite a few audiobooks in the car but can only use plex if they are encoded as video which is a huge waste of space, time, and bandwidth.
+1 Would love to have this feature.
+1
omg.. this can't be so hard, or ?!
+1
Is this forum/thread really for posting wishes?
If so, I find it odd that no official Plex-developer has picked this up. At least to say: This hs been heard and prioritized way way down.
:huh: Reading through this thread is like watching someone having an argument with a closed door og beating a pillow... Surely that can't be the way to handle wishes from PLEX-mebers?
+1
+1
Would love to use it for books
I’d like it as a feature for any audio file; just add a button that bookmarks the time. I have a ton of old radio show mp3s that I’m constantly listening to, and adding this feature would be a godsend.
Edit: Also wanted to mention what others have mentioned… 15/30 second jump buttons for any audio file.
Bumping to the top again. Adding an additional library type - "Audiobook" and merely having it save progress like a movie/tv show does (something that Plex already admirably does!) shouldn't be a difficult thing to add.
This would be so good, the functionality is already there for film files so how hard can it be to implement for audiobooks? :)
Actually is more of a problem than it seems on first blush. Because of the way they are designed audio files are harder to seek accurately in. Going to a set position in a video file is pretty straight forward because of their design. To put it simply video files use frames and seeking is just a matter of counting frames. In an audio file it is harder as the "frames," if they exist at all, are not as predictable.
There is also the fact that in many/most cases the playback and seeking is dependent on the client and there are many clients that do not even support the minimal requirements for seeking in an audio file. ex. Roku only just recently added the ability to seek in an audio file and very few developers have been able to use that functionality successfully on any decent scale and even those that have been able to use it find it hit or miss.
I REALLY want this functionality but I recognize the difficulties and just hope the Plex developers can overcome the problems and I hope Plex does not delay implementation in some clients because not all clients can support it.
Maybe it could be implemented through some sort of "tracscoding" functionality so that the client sees some format that is easier to seek in. That could make audiobook support independent of the client player.
Just did some reading and whoa, you are right. I dont really understand all of it, but it does seem to be an issue. Why does audio seem to trivial in many systems, and not so in others? It seems that jumping to something like 0:30 in a file is not something to take for granted.
It has to do with "frames" and other markers that video files use to maintain stability that are not needed for audio only. Those markers have the side effect/benefit of allowing easy seeking by just counting. Audio's compression methods do not include reliable and countable methods of finding how far you are into a file.
Computer's and many mp3 players use simple file position seeking to remember and seek to a position but many devices that Plex uses do not have that ability in the audio section of their SDK.
The actual details are rather complex and probably should not be discussed in a thread that was not started for that purpose but one thing can be brought up. Many SDKs that did/do not have that ability have added it or are adding it or something similar and it is up to the developers ti revisit their audio code to implement audio seeking when the SDK allows it.
