Cannot import my audiobooks

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Hey guys, I hope someone can help me. I'm out of ideas. I have audible, and I used the program Libation to download my audiobooks. Initially, it downloaded them as a .M4U file with a .Cue file. I put this into a library with the type "Audio Books" selected. I waited and to my surprise it didn't import anything, and didn't even list anything under "Folders." The original format it saved them was E:\Audiobooks\<Book Name>\<Book>.m4u. I thought it might be the .m4u format so I had the program re-download everything as a .mp3 file. It saved them in the same structure. I re-scanned the library and Emby still wouldn't recognize anything. At this point I looked up the Emby naming guide for Audio Books. I saw that an accepted format was Audibooks/Book Name/Chapter #.mp3. I re-downloaded the library again and saved them exactly like that. Example: E:\Audiobooks\Life Reset Book 1\Chapter 1.mp3. I deleted the library and recreated it. Still nothing. I'm hoping someone can tell me what I did wrong. 

embyserver.txt

[Abobader 3216]

Hello Drunk4aFortnite,

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Please wait for someone from staff support or our members to reply to you.

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Emby Team

[Gilgamesh_48 1040]

33 minutes ago, Drunk4aFortnite said:

Hey guys, I hope someone can help me. I'm out of ideas. I have audible, and I used the program Libation to download my audiobooks. Initially, it downloaded them as a .M4U file with a .Cue file. I put this into a library with the type "Audio Books" selected. I waited and to my surprise it didn't import anything, and didn't even list anything under "Folders." The original format it saved them was E:\Audiobooks\<Book Name>\<Book>.m4u. I thought it might be the .m4u format so I had the program re-download everything as a .mp3 file. It saved them in the same structure. I re-scanned the library and Emby still wouldn't recognize anything. At this point I looked up the Emby naming guide for Audio Books. I saw that an accepted format was Audibooks/Book Name/Chapter #.mp3. I re-downloaded the library again and saved them exactly like that. Example: E:\Audiobooks\Life Reset Book 1\Chapter 1.mp3. I deleted the library and recreated it. Still nothing. I'm hoping someone can tell me what I did wrong. 

embyserver.txt 928.6 kB · 1 download

I had problem after problem attempting to use Emby for audiobooks and I never had a satisfactory experience. It seems that audiobooks have too much diversity for Emby to handle. (They are also generally much too long for Emby as well) I never had any real success at all and the client I prefer to use (Roku) exits the app if Emby is paused for more than 15-20 minutes. (Not Emby's fault as Roku forces apps to do that) 

I finally realized that Emby was not going to allow me to play my audiobooks as I wanted so I started to look around.

The solution I ended up with was using Emby for all video functions and using MediaMonkey for audio. That also allows me to have my audiobooks streamed to the entire house and be controlled by my Alexa devices. So I can be anywhere in my house and say "Alexa book" and the current audiobook would either start playing or stop playing. I have found the doing that produces a LOT less problems and does not force me to listen to audiobooks or music from only the location where I started it or jumping through hoops to stop playback one place and start it in another.

I know that the "ideal" would be for one app to control all media but the "ideal" just has too many problems for me so I have settled on using two different programs and I have found that each one does a very good job when they are isolated. 

As an example I can be watching a TV show through Emby and I get up to fix a meal and I can pause Emby and simply say :Alexa Book" and have the current audiobook play as i move through  my house. I can then as i am sitting back down to continue watching I can say "Alexa book" and the audio playback stops and then it is just a matter of restarting Emby's playback. 

I find it very easy to use Emby+MediaMonkey to consume all my media. 

While it is good to have one app to do everything it, sometimes, is MUCH better to split tasks to gain efficiency and reliability.
Sometimes it seems that trying to make Emby do everything is a lot like using a screw driver to drive a nail into a board. . 

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

I would be much more comfortable giving up if I could get it to recognize at least something. Emby supposedly does music l, though I haven't tried, and after I split these up into chapters some of these files are as small as a song. I mean they're just .mp3. I'm just confused. It does my movies, TV, and podcasts fine.

[Gilgamesh_48 1040]

18 minutes ago, Drunk4aFortnite said:

I would be much more comfortable giving up if I could get it to recognize at least something. Emby supposedly does music l, though I haven't tried, and after I split these up into chapters some of these files are as small as a song. I mean they're just .mp3. I'm just confused. It does my movies, TV, and podcasts fine.

The reason you are having trouble is that Emby does audio very inconsistently. There are lots of things that could be the problem you are having but I would bet a decent amount that you are using an "audiobook" type library. I do not know why but I never had any success using "audiobooks" as a library type but I had success simply importing my audiobooks as music. It did not have all the features of an audiobook type library but it worked as well as Emby can for audio. I did find it necessary to combine the many small files the most audiobooks have into a long single file so Emby saw them as a single song. 

Again a music library is different from an audiobook library in that, for me, music works but audiobooks do not. 

I am a bit of a pragmatist so I simply do not spend a lot of time trying to make the inferior product work when the superior product works so well. That is true even when the inferior product has potential to be the better. It is just not worth the effort for me to try and make Emby work well with audiobooks. 
If Emby ever really makes audiobooks work correctly then I might try Emby again for audiobooks but Emby does not seem to believe audiobooks are important so they spend a LOT less resources on development for audiobooks than they do for regular music and all forms of video. They may be correct in that I know quite few people that actually use audiobooks in any form. That may mean that audiobooks are truly unimportant except for people that are vision impaired or, like me, unable to read for extended periods because of headaches. The numbers involved have to be small so Emby ignoring audiobooks is quite understandable.  I am very glad there is a really good alternative for audiobooks. 

OH: I did have some success using Emby for audiobooks by simply renaming my mp3s as mp4s and making the library a TV library and organizing the books like TV shows. I, of course, did not get any metadata doing that but Emby is pretty forgiving and when it finds an mp4 file with no video part it simply plays it with nothing on the screen. (Disclaimer: I verified the functionality of the above several versions ago and I cannot assure that Emby still supports it.)

There are lots of ways to force Emby to handle audiobooks but, for me, the "audiobook" type library just does not work at all.

[Lessaj 198]

What did you set the "Music folder structure" to for this library? When you navigate to the library after adding it and completing a library scan is it completely empty? Do you have a folders tab when looking at the library? If so what does that look like? I don't have any audio books but I made a test library with some music mp3s (I used the Rush album 2112 which it picked up from the tags) and they loaded fine. I'd have to do a little more work to make these "bare" mp3s, meaning no tags in them, but shouldn't be an issue to pick up mp3s.

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

In the folder option I tried both unsorted and sorted by book name/chapters. I wonder if it's a tagging issue. Not sure if Libation tags. Assume untagged for now. Also yeah nothing shows up under suggested or folders. Completely blank

[Lessaj 198]

Okay I removed the library then used Picard to remove all the tags and readded the library. When adding the library I did nothing except pick that it was an audio book type and picked the top level folder. I do have some different results, so it's possible tagging could have an impact, but it shouldn't prevent items from being displayed entirely.

[Luke 38559]

HI, m4u files are not currently supported.

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Any ideas on why mines not working or how I can reproduce? I've tried .mp3, .m4u, file renaming, and library recreation. Like is there a setting I have to enable for audio files?? I also forgot to mention I've tried putting the directory in an unsorted music folder too...@Luke I've converted them to .mp3 without success.

Edited June 19 by Drunk4aFortnite

[Luke 38559]

How many emby libraries have you created, and what folder paths are added to each one?

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

I have 8 not including the audio book. 9 if you include podcasts. They're all on my E:/ Drive.

Movies

E:/Movies

Movies 3D

E:/Movies 3D

TV Shows

E:/TV Shows

Anime

E:/Anime

E:/Anime - Ecchi

VOD Movies(.strm files)

E:/VOD Movies

VOD Shows(.strm files)

E:/VOD Shows

This one has 12 folders all under E:/VOD Shows

XXX

E:/XXX

Anime - H

E:/Anime - H

 

They all work really well. Failed one is E:/Audiobooks

[Luke 38559]

Did you make sure to run a library scan after adding new files?

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Yeah I've tried both scanning library files directly from the folder menu and running an entire 22 hour library scan from scheduled tasks. My last library scan completed a half hour ago.

Edit: I can post a new emby server log when I get home from after the scan if you need. I can't seem to figure out how to get it to download from android.

Edited June 19 by Drunk4aFortnite

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Here's the updated server log if it helps.

embyserver.txt

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Here is also a pic of a sample file to show folder structure and such.

[Neminem 622]

Try with 

Audiobooks -> Author -> Book

[Neminem 622]

But this also depend on your library config.

What is this set to.

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

its set to "perfectly organized into book folders, with tracks directly in book folders." I also tried unsorted.

So I just took one of the chapter 1.mp3 files and put it in a folder on its own called music and created a music library for emby to see if I could get it to recognize just a track. Well while it was scanning library this error came up. No idea what it means

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

Update.

So after my server crashed from that error, I just checked my music library 30 mins later and the one MP3 was there! Metadata and all. Still nothing for the audiobook folder. Maybe ill try switching it back to unsorted and just try 1 book to start with, or just use a music library called audio books lol.

[Drunk4aFortnite 3]

I figured it out!!!!!! So I think the ultimate culprit here was Libation. In the audiobook folders that it was creating it was adding a hidden .ico file and a desktop.ini file. I don't think emby liked these at all. I created new folders myself and copied all the files minus the hidden ones to them and recreated my audiobook library on emby and viola! Hopefully this will help someone in the future lol. Thanks for all the help everyone!