Rethink Audiobooks

[Beav 17]

I think that it would be a good idea if Emby rethinks the way it looks at audiobooks.

Currently, it would seem that Emby is treating audiobooks in the same way that it treats music.

While I understand the ease of this for the programmers, as they basically just use the same a mp3 player as they would with music. I would argue that audiobooks should be treated more as TV series than albums/cds.

 

1)      With an audiobook divided into chapter each chapter would be treated the same way as an episode in a TV series. With Emby marking each chapter as played or not, and remembering where in the chapter that the user stop listening.  For those who don’t have their book broken into chapter Openaudio is a great program for this, and I am sure that there are others.

 

2)      Treating each audiobook as an individual series would allow for a continue listening (instead of watching) row on the main page.

 

3)      It would also make it easier to navigate audiobooks as the audiobooks page would first display the books themselves and not the author. Having the ability to sort by author is nice but not a necessity when looking for a title.

 

4)      With treating audiobooks in this manner, one could also then set up “collections” such as “Harry Potter” or “Sherlock Holmes”.

 

5)      Emby would then get rid of the “shuffle” button on the play menu inside of an audiobook, as this is unnecessary in that you don’t shuffle a books chapters (unless someone really wants a head trip) like you would the tracks on a cd.

[Luke 38832]

Quote

2)      Treating each audiobook as an individual series would allow for a continue listening (instead of watching) row on the main page.

 

Hi, we already do this.

Quote

3)      It would also make it easier to navigate audiobooks as the audiobooks page would first display the books themselves and not the author. Having the ability to sort by author is nice but not a necessity when looking for a title.

Hi there, have you explored your emby user home screen settings? You can set the landing tab for your audio books library however you wish, so if you want to start on the Books tab, you can already do that.

[Luke 38832]

5 hours ago, Beav said:

4)      With treating audiobooks in this manner, one could also then set up “collections” such as “Harry Potter” or “Sherlock Holmes”.

Hi there, you can already add audiobooks to collections.

5 hours ago, Beav said:

5)      Emby would then get rid of the “shuffle” button on the play menu inside of an audiobook, as this is unnecessary in that you don’t shuffle a books chapters (unless someone really wants a head trip) like you would the tracks on a cd.

Hi, this is why shuffle is not on the main audiobook screen, but it's still in the 3-dot menu for those that need it. Surely you can just ignore from there, right?

[Junglejim 379]

8 hours ago, Beav said:

1)      With an audiobook divided into chapter each chapter would be treated the same way as an episode in a TV series. With Emby marking each chapter as played or not, and remembering where in the chapter that the user stop listening.  For those who don’t have their book broken into chapter Openaudio is a great program for this, and I am sure that there are others.

I think this is subject to how you organize and process your audiobooks. Personally I like to use the m4b format (one file) over multiple mp3 files as chapters/tracks.

The m4b file can have chapters embedded (tags) which acts like chapters in a tvshow/movie..

[Beav 17]

Luke, 

While you are correct with your comments if one is using the web app, this is not the case in the Roku TV app. There are no collections, nor does the app maintain your listening history, and yes there is a shuffle button " instant mix". 

Edited December 6, 2023 by Beav

[Luke 38832]

OK we'll look at getting the Roku app caught up. Thanks.

[slyfox 46]

You would probably get a lot better experience using a dedicated server app: AudioBookShelf. I used to use Emby and Plex for Audiobooks but fully switched to ABS, and it has been a much better experience. Leave Emby for Movies and Music.

Edited December 19, 2023 by slyfox

[seanfletcher255 3]

if you like having multiple apps for me i prefer to have all media in one app just saying maybe others feel the same i don't know

[slyfox 46]

52 minutes ago, seanfletcher255 said:

if you like having multiple apps for me i prefer to have all media in one app just saying maybe others feel the same i don't know

Depends on one's preference. I prefer to have dedicated app that does one thing well rather than a single app that does everying half backed. AudioBookshelf for AudioBooks beats Plex, Emby or anything else.

Edited January 5, 2024 by slyfox

[MistD 30]

Yeah, i think the Audiobooks feature on Emby is just a "fork" of the music library type. I tried it today and removed it right away.
It has bugs, some things are not even "translated" into proper language for audiobooks (why i have "songs" in author page ?), other things are not functioning properly.
The library setting is just mirroring the music type (metadata agents and sources totally un-related to audiobooks)

I would love to have Emby as my main media server for everything "playable" (music, movies, tutorials, audiobooks, podcasts, home videos etc.)

It seems that Audiobookshelf is the way to go for audiobooks.
Even if you don't want advanced features for audiobooks ... Emby is just half-baked in this area.

Edited January 8, 2024 by MistD

[Luke 38832]

4 minutes ago, MistD said:

Yeah, i think the Audiobooks feature on Emby is just a "fork" of the music library type. I tried it today and removed it right away.
It has bugs, some things are not even "translated" into proper language for audiobooks (why i have "songs" in author page ?), other things are not functioning properly.
The library setting is just mirroring the music type (metadata agents and sources totally un-related to audiobooks)

I would love to have Emby as my main media server for everything "playable" (music, movies, tutorials, audiobooks, podcasts, home videos etc.)

It seems that Audiobookshelf is the way to go for audiobooks.
Even if you don't want advanced features for audiobooks ... Emby is just half-baked in this area.

Hi, what do you think is not functioning properly? If there were no Songs section on the author screen, would there have still been an issue?

[seanfletcher255 3]

1 hour ago, slyfox said:

Depends on one's preference. I prefer to have dedicated app that does one thing well rather than a single app that does everying half backed. AudioBookshelf for AudioBooks beats Plex, Emby or anything else.

yes its all about preference

[seanfletcher255 3]

4 hours ago, Luke said:

Hi, what do you think is not functioning properly? If there were no Songs section on the author screen, would there have still been an issue?

I don't know what MistD does not like or think is not done but me the biggest is resuming a book i don't know if its just me but my books being ripped from CDs usually divided into tracks so if i pause a book resuming just resumes and finishes the current track not the rest of the book, 

i agree terminology is off calling it a song when its a section, chapter or segment (not sure what exactly we should name it) but those sorts of things if you favorite a book it shows up as an album in the favorites list and though it technically is would be nice to call it a book but i don't know exactly how much work it would be to change it

probably not a priority those are my thoughts

[supermood 57]

On 11/24/2023 at 6:31 PM, Beav said:

I think that it would be a good idea if Emby rethinks the way it looks at audiobooks.

Currently, it would seem that Emby is treating audiobooks in the same way that it treats music.

While I understand the ease of this for the programmers, as they basically just use the same a mp3 player as they would with music. I would argue that audiobooks should be treated more as TV series than albums/cds.

 

1)      With an audiobook divided into chapter each chapter would be treated the same way as an episode in a TV series. With Emby marking each chapter as played or not, and remembering where in the chapter that the user stop listening.  For those who don’t have their book broken into chapter Openaudio is a great program for this, and I am sure that there are others.

 

2)      Treating each audiobook as an individual series would allow for a continue listening (instead of watching) row on the main page.

 

3)      It would also make it easier to navigate audiobooks as the audiobooks page would first display the books themselves and not the author. Having the ability to sort by author is nice but not a necessity when looking for a title.

 

4)      With treating audiobooks in this manner, one could also then set up “collections” such as “Harry Potter” or “Sherlock Holmes”.

 

5)      Emby would then get rid of the “shuffle” button on the play menu inside of an audiobook, as this is unnecessary in that you don’t shuffle a books chapters (unless someone really wants a head trip) like you would the tracks on a cd.

check out abs, audiobook shelf. it will be perfect very soon imho

[MistD 30]

On 1/8/2024 at 6:31 AM, Luke said:

Hi, what do you think is not functioning properly? If there were no Songs section on the author screen, would there have still been an issue?

I think the terminology is wrong , authors should have “audiobooks” in their profile page … not songs

that one was pretty confusing at first , it gave me the impression of some kind of error, library not working properly etc.

I had issues with listings by genre (not picking up books), the same audiobooks working fine in audiobookshelf.

I could tell pretty much right away that the functionality was a “port” from the music library type.

Metadata agents also looked like the ones from Music. I noticed that audiobookshelf is using metadata agents specific for audiobooks (ex: audible)

anyway, we will get there i think.

Audiobookshelf is a dedicated solution hence more feature rich.

[Luke 38832]

Quote

Metadata agents also looked like the ones from Music.

No, they are whichever ones you choose. The music ones are only made available in the event you wish to use them.

[MistD 30]

Maybe i am doing things wrong but i have mostly music related stuff: MusicBrainz, TheAudioDB

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2024 by MistD

[Luke 38832]

15 minutes ago, MistD said:

Maybe i am doing things wrong but i have mostly music related stuff: MusicBrainz, TheAudioDB

 

 

 

Right ,they are just there as an option in case you want to use them.

[kuldan5853 1]

@Luke, I commented on the reddit thread you guys posted yesterday with requests for suggestions, and this would be my take about the Audiobooks issue:

For me, a big thing would be full support for multiple scenarios concerning Audiobooks.

I'm German, and we're big on what the US would call Radio Dramas - basically TV shows, but audio only. They have episodes, titles...

Thus, it would be great if we could have full audiobook support for scenarios where we have an actual Audiobook (Author - Title) as well as audiobook series (Series Title - Episode title), also with episodes that are multi-file within a folder (so you'd have Library\Show Name\Episode Name<files for the episode>).

This of course with the other library features like played/unplayed, position, etc.

There is already a server out there (Booksonic, based on Subsonic) that can provide this, but it hasn't been in active development for years and it's frankly just very clunky and unreliable at this point.

So, to give an actual example - this is my Audiobook Library structure right now:

Audiobooks\Audiobooks\Author Name\Book Title\CD1\<a bunch of files making up the book>

Audiobooks\Radio Dramas\Show Title\<Episode Number> - <Episode Title>\<a bunch of files making up the episode, either mp3 or m4b>

If Emby would fully support this, it should treat audio books / radio dramas more like TV Shows and movies, and not so much like music. 

 

 

 

[unisoft 311]

On 21/04/2024 at 16:52, kuldan5853 said:

@Luke, I commented on the reddit thread you guys posted yesterday with requests for suggestions, and this would be my take about the Audiobooks issue:

For me, a big thing would be full support for multiple scenarios concerning Audiobooks.

I'm German, and we're big on what the US would call Radio Dramas - basically TV shows, but audio only. They have episodes, titles...

Thus, it would be great if we could have full audiobook support for scenarios where we have an actual Audiobook (Author - Title) as well as audiobook series (Series Title - Episode title), also with episodes that are multi-file within a folder (so you'd have Library\Show Name\Episode Name<files for the episode>).

This of course with the other library features like played/unplayed, position, etc.

There is already a server out there (Booksonic, based on Subsonic) that can provide this, but it hasn't been in active development for years and it's frankly just very clunky and unreliable at this point.

So, to give an actual example - this is my Audiobook Library structure right now:

Audiobooks\Audiobooks\Author Name\Book Title\CD1\<a bunch of files making up the book>

Audiobooks\Radio Dramas\Show Title\<Episode Number> - <Episode Title>\<a bunch of files making up the episode, either mp3 or m4b>

If Emby would fully support this, it should treat audio books / radio dramas more like TV Shows and movies, and not so much like music. 

 

 

 

If you think I am going to change 1000's of cover art from CD sized squares to rectangular or thumb art which is what TV uses!!!!!

Music view works, they just need to refine things like the top menu items like "Songs" and show the track descriptions (like tv shows) so when in horizontal view which uses the FOLDERS view incidentally, you cans see the track (episode) description BEFORE you select to play it.  Often I see the tracks listed and I have to navigate to a specific track to see the description, its so frustrating. I think the Android TV app gets this right from memory BUT that would be using the vertical view as that app does not have horizontal view.

[Chyron 247]

On 1/7/2024 at 10:31 PM, Luke said:

Hi, what do you think is not functioning properly?

I think the fact that the Emby dev team does not listen to audiobooks means the dev team does not understand what would be best to improve the experience. Having embedded chapters in a horizontal row is not useful or intuitive; having the ability to reorder audiobook tracks, which is pointless, leads to accidents. Among other things.

• Chapters should be shown in a single vertical list, whether they be from embedded m4b chapters or separate tracks
• There should not be separate artwork thumbnails for each chapter. It wastes space.
• Metadata scrapers should pull from book or audiobook sources, not from themoviedb
• There should be a feature to set bookmarks
• There should be customizable FF/RWD buttons that let you skip forward or back by 15 or so seconds
• There should be an ability to adjust the playback speed

If you used Emby for audiobooks, you could intuit for yourself why it doesn't work well and why the experience is barebones at best.

Edited April 30, 2024 by Chyron

[sydlexius 258]

Since they seem to be fond of using "market leaders" to influence their design decision (a perfectly valid benchmark), I'd be more than happy to chip in some money for them to to buy some content from Audible just to get a baseline of what most users are used to experiencing (I can understand some hesitancy to install other FOSS solutions, since that can open up a legal can of worms).  I'd even be willing to setup a test account for them on my ABS server, if they want an example of a well-designed, self-hosted solution (I can't speak for Plex/Prologue, which is another popular combo). I gave up on using Emby for my books/comics/audiobooks some time ago, but I'd love to the the product improve in this area (heck, I might even be persuaded to switch back).

[Chyron 247]

I complain a lot, but truthfully I'm exasperated as I've been asking the Emby devs for audiobook support since October 2017, which is four years before Audiobookshelf ever existed. So when a dev here says "Why do you think it doesn't work well?" that just hits home how they never used it for that before. Making separate feature requests for individual improvements at this stage is like picking what color paint to use on a house with no electrical wiring or plumbing. Sure, it works as a shelter but it doesn't have the necessary amenities. If the person building it never actually uses it enough to notice what's missing, there's no way they can know what people who do use it actually want.

Plain and simple, audiobook functionality on Emby is ugly and barebones for a lot of reasons, and it won't improve until the devs actually use it to listen to audiobooks.

Meanwhile:

Edited May 1, 2024 by Chyron

[unisoft 311]

On 01/05/2024 at 22:39, Chyron said:

I complain a lot, but truthfully I'm exasperated as I've been asking the Emby devs for audiobook support since October 2017, which is four years before Audiobookshelf ever existed. So when a dev here says "Why do you think it doesn't work well?" that just hits home how they never used it for that before. Making separate feature requests for individual improvements at this stage is like picking what color paint to use on a house with no electrical wiring or plumbing. Sure, it works as a shelter but it doesn't have the necessary amenities. If the person building it never actually uses it enough to notice what's missing, there's no way they can know what people who do use it actually want.

Plain and simple, audiobook functionality on Emby is ugly and barebones for a lot of reasons, and it won't improve until the devs actually use it to listen to audiobooks.

Meanwhile:

That look would not work for me on TV. Its more like a computer UI app on a computer not "ten foot interface". I also don't like all those rails of "Recent Series", "Recently Added", "Discover", "Listen Again" BUT don't mind in the least if THOSE rails appeared under "Suggestions" menu item (like some of the other libraries). But not on main screen for a library. Just too cluttered.

Edited May 3, 2024 by unisoft

[Junglejim 379]

I haven't got around to trying Audiobookshelf yet but it look's really cool.

At some point I'll spin it up in docker and have a go. I know it has a standard Android app but does it have a Android TV app?

If not, could I sideload the standard app on Andriod TV?

Edited May 3, 2024 by Junglejim