Rethink Audiobooks

[Junglejim 379]

14 hours ago, Luke said:

Are you referring to the part and series tags?

Yeah that would be great if you could support those.

I think you have most of the other tags covered..

[Tremas 157]

@jaycedk had posted metadata images earlier in this topic that had "Narrator" as a tag. Is that common? This had the same information as "Composer," so I suggest that emby try to import both and display as "Narrator" in UI. 

[Tremas 157]

In addition to metadata/tags, there is the UI.

It is worth noting is the "tabs" that audiobookshelf (and others) are using. You have Library, Series, Collections, Authors, Narrators. That seems ideal to me.

In emby those tabs generally translates to: Library = Books/Albums, Series = NA (in emby), collections = collections, authors = album artists, narrators = composer/narrator. Emby also has Genre and Folders (good). So we need emby to organize Series correctly from the metadata.

Then there is the UI once you click on those tabs.

Currently in emby (iOS for example), an individual author page has Author Bio,  Songs (?),  Albums, and More Like This. I would suggest it should Author Bio, Books, Series (if any), collections (if any), and either remove "More Like This" or rename.

If you click on the Audiobook Genres tab and then select a specific genre you get Authors, Books, and Episodes (?). It's clear to see why people think the team isn't dogfooding this part of their software. Get rid of episodes and add series and collections. How is an "episode" defined here? A track?

Then there is suggestions: Continue Listening, Latest Audio Books, Recently Played (by track), Frequently Played, Favorites Authors, Favorite Books, and Favorite Episodes (?). I would suggest we don't need frequently played for this library type.

I know this has all been pointed out before, but it bears repeating.

The other tricky bit emby needs to handle is chapters. Chapters could be embedded chapter markers in an M4A or separated into individual audio files if ripped from a CD. Anyone know how audiobookshelf handles that?

 

[Neminem 698]

50 minutes ago, Tremas said:

Anyone know how audiobookshelf handles that?

In ABS are handled like this.

Chapters:

Files :
I don't have any multi file ( mp3 ), since I join them into m4b files.

Here is the tags from mp3tag

Edited May 24, 2024 by jaycedk
Adding info

[Tremas 157]

Looking at the documentation for audiobookshelf it seems straightforward. I've never used it, but it seems like something emby could take inspiration from (hint, hint @Luke)

 

From: https://www.audiobookshelf.org/docs/#book-directory-structure

Books are designated by folders. Any audio files (or ebook files) within a folder will be grouped into that book, except in the root folder where each audio file will be treated as an individual book.

An audiobook contains tracks. Tracks are audio files assigned a track number.
The track number is parsed from the audio filename and from the ID3 tags of the audio file.
Audiobooks that are made up of multiple discs or cd's will be ordered first by disc number then by track number.

 

The scanner will choose the more accurate track/disc number between the filename and ID3 tag numbers.

Tracks can be manually ordered and enabled/disabled by pressing the "Manage Tracks" button on the audiobook page.

If you have a file named desc.txt in the library item folder it will be used as the description.

If you have a file named reader.txt in the library item folder it will be used as the narrator.

If you have an OPF file with extension .opf in the library item folder it will be parsed.
Details extracted from OPF:

title, 

author, 

narrator, 

publishYear, 

publisher, 

isbn, 

description, 

genres, 

language, 

series, 

volumeNumber

 

And regarding metadata and chapters:

 

Again, I've never used audiobookshelf, but to me the information above is pretty much the entire product requirements document we've been asking for on emby.

Edited May 24, 2024 by Tremas

[Junglejim 379]

13 hours ago, Tremas said:

The other tricky bit emby needs to handle is chapters. Chapters could be embedded chapter markers in an M4A or separated into individual audio files if ripped from a CD. Anyone know how audiobookshelf handles that?

ABS will use the individual audio files (mp3) as chapters, if you decide to use the merge tool in ABS (Make M4B Audiobook File) it will use the individual files/chapters and embed them to the m4b. There is also a chapter lookup tool in ABS to import chapters from online sources but these tools are really out of scope for a app like emby.

As for individual files (m4b/m4a) it will read the embedded tags, if the is non you could use the chapter edit/lookup feature and get lucky with a exact match. Then use the "quick embed" tool to write that chapter meta back to the m4b as tags.

Edited May 25, 2024 by Junglejim

[Junglejim 379]

13 hours ago, Tremas said:

@jaycedk had posted metadata images earlier in this topic that had "Narrator" as a tag. Is that common? This had the same information as "Composer," so I suggest that emby try to import both and display as "Narrator" in UI. 

I'm not sure were the "narrator" tag comes from, @jaycedkwould have a better idea. If I write tags using ABS is uses the "composer" tag.

It would be good to cover both.

[Neminem 698]

8 minutes ago, Junglejim said:

I'm not sure were the "narrator" tag comes from, @jaycedkwould have a better idea. If I write tags using ABS is uses the "composer" tag.

It would be good to cover both.

Looking inside the metadate.abs file that is created by ABS.

I see its using narrators, in there

All my audiobooks are tagged by ABS.

But looking at the m4b file with mp3tag I see that composer = narrator

So I guess both apply.

[Junglejim 379]

35 minutes ago, jaycedk said:

Looking inside the metadate.abs file that is created by ABS.

I see its using narrators, in there

All my audiobooks are tagged by ABS.

But looking at the m4b file with mp3tag I see that composer = narrator

So I guess both apply.

Interesting, you could have some settings enabled that I don't (Store metadata with item etc.) and the embed tool could be using that file to add extra tags?

I'm not sure but I can't get the "narrator" tag in my files just "composer".

EDIT: Ok I think I found out why.. I usually use the "quick embed" (lazy) option which obviously skips some tags, where the manage option has them all..

 

Edited May 25, 2024 by Junglejim

[Neminem 698]

Yeah I'm doing full embed, some versions back there was an issue where images, was not embedet using quick.

So I just always use full.

[MarkSM 0]

The TV support for Audiobookshelf is nonexistent.  Enough said ...

[Neminem 698]

11 minutes ago, MarkSM said:

The TV support for Audiobookshelf is nonexistent.  Enough said ...

We are not looking to use ABS on a tv, but improve Emby support for Audiobooks.

[MarkSM 0]

 

On 5/26/2024 at 9:23 AM, jaycedk said:

We are not looking to use ABS on a tv, but improve Emby support for Audiobooks.

My point is simply that since Audiobookshelf has zero TV OS support, I could never integrate their "environment" into my workflow.  I am personally quite happy with Emby as an all purpose delivery system.

[Neminem 698]

58 minutes ago, MarkSM said:

My point is simply that since Audiobookshelf has zero TV OS support, I could never integrate their "environment" into my workflow.  I am personally quite happy with Emby as an all purpose delivery system.

Its not about ABS's workflow, its about improving audiobook integration into emby.

And the emby's usage of tags.

Please read the whole thread.

[MarkSM 0]

19 hours ago, jaycedk said:

Its not about ABS's workflow, its about improving audiobook integration into emby.

And the emby's usage of tags.

Please read the whole thread.

Will do!  But if you are going to spend all this time on "audio books", you might as well include "video lectures" as a sub project, because that is where Emby truly tanks.  Somehow Plex is able to aggregate heavily populated audio and video separately by author with no problem.  Emby is clueless.  If I can help, I'll spend some serious time on it.

[Neminem 698]

27 minutes ago, MarkSM said:

Will do!  But if you are going to spend all this time on "audio books", you might as well include "video lectures" as a sub project, because that is where Emby truly tanks.  Somehow Plex is able to aggregate heavily populated audio and video separately by author with no problem.  Emby is clueless.  If I can help, I'll spend some serious time on it.

Guess you would need to open another FR for that

[Junglejim 379]

On 28/05/2024 at 03:42, MarkSM said:

 

My point is simply that since Audiobookshelf has zero TV OS support, I could never integrate their "environment" into my workflow.  I am personally quite happy with Emby as an all purpose delivery system.

That's cool, where just throwing ideas here on how other servers/apps do things in hope Emby can maybe make some use of there tricks to improve there audiobook library.

Still ABS makes a great audiobook media manager, even for use with emby! Sure it happens to be a self hosted server but that is just a bonus. If you have some android tablets/phones to connect to it, personally my fav way of consuming audiobooks... (bluetooth -  headphones/speakers/soundbar).

I can still use my Android TV with ABS using the browser but it's a bit clunky to nav with a remote, ok with a wireless keyboard/trackpad...

Edited May 31, 2024 by Junglejim

[Chyron 247]

I'm baffled at how we're still discussing whether Composer refers to Narrator or not. I don't see how Emby is going to progress with improving support of audiobook content when the absolute basic concepts are repeatedly brought into question.

Edited May 31, 2024 by Chyron

[unisoft 311]

15 hours ago, Chyron said:

I'm baffled at how we're still discussing whether Composer refers to Narrator or not. I don't see how Emby is going to progress with improving support of audiobook content when the absolute basic concepts are repeatedly brought into question.

Composer like some other IDv3 tags can just be repurposed as Narrator when an Audiobook library, but I think its best for Writer (which follows similar for music). Sometimes an Author is used for a well known title but its actually a "ported" version to audio book or series series often referred to as "Adapted by". In this case, composer can be use for actual writers. For example, new Enid Blyton Famous Five stories written after her death as just one example.

There could be a simple NARRATOR ID3v2 tag for narrator and be more accurate.

[Luke 38842]

Support for Narrator can be added.

[NitroNine 22]

On 1/5/2024 at 4:54 PM, 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

I love the idea of having one app handle everything but issues always arise I find that doesn't make it worth it.

I still don't understand how Emby doesn't have the option to set your displays per device and not account.  I don't view media on my phone, so I would love my login to just show music/audiobooks/podcasts.  And my TV's to only show TV/movies.   So I need to create multiple users to do this and log into them depending on the device.

[horstepipe 364]

On 6/1/2024 at 9:16 PM, Luke said:

Support for Narrator can be added.

any roadmap about this or generally about optimizing the audio book feature in emby?

[Jdiesel 1242]

It's been a while since I've tried Emby for audiobooks, has progress tracking for multi mp3 books been fixed?

 

Emby really needs to include https://audnex.us/ as a metadata agent for audiobooks.

 

This is nothing new as it's been shared multiple times before but here is an example of how id3 tags could be handled

https://github.com/seanap/Plex-Audiobook-Guide?tab=readme-ov-file#tags-that-are-being-set

[Luke 38842]

21 minutes ago, Jdiesel said:

It's been a while since I've tried Emby for audiobooks, has progress tracking for multi mp3 books been fixed?

 

Emby really needs to include https://audnex.us/ as a metadata agent for audiobooks.

 

This is nothing new as it's been shared multiple times before but here is an example of how id3 tags could be handled

https://github.com/seanap/Plex-Audiobook-Guide?tab=readme-ov-file#tags-that-are-being-set

Hi, never heard of audnex but we an take a look at it. Thanks.

[Chyron 247]

Audnexus. https://github.com/laxamentumtech/audnexus

Edited December 4, 2024 by Chyron