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Audiobook support


horstepipe

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horstepipe

hey

what I'm really missing is support for audiobooks.

Simply saving the resume point for those mp3s would be absolutely enough, no need to fetch metadata etc.

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You can try out audio book support in the latest beta release of Emby Server. Simply create a library using the Books content type. Once scanned in you can play and resume just like you would expect with audio books. Please try it out and give us your feedback, we're listening. Thanks !

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horstepipe

You can try out audio book support in the latest beta release of Emby Server. Simply create a library using the Books content type. Once scanned in you can play and resume just like you would expect with audio books. Please try it out and give us your feedback, we're listening. Thanks !

Will this work with Kodi, too?

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horstepipe

+1

 

Any update? Plex has it now but I would prefer to be able to use Emby for everything.

 

 

You can try out audio book support in the latest beta release of Emby Server. Simply create a library using the Books content type. Once scanned in you can play and resume just like you would expect with audio books. Please try it out and give us your feedback, we're listening. Thanks !

 

So looks like the magic words are "Plex has it now"?

You needed just one day after hearing this to implement it.

I'm wondering if you prioritize copying Plex' features over your users needs.

 

But anyway, thanks for finally doing this!

Btw.: I'm sure Plex also creates events for box sets ;-)

 

Regards

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  • 2 years later...
daedalus

there is literally zero hint that this "is on its way"

Edited by daedalus
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Lorties

Resume is the most critical function of audio book playback.  How often do you have 12 hours in a row free? If you looking at user use of that function then yes it will be non existent. No one is going to use it with out that ability.

Why even bother having Audio book support? If your going to do a job...... Its obviously a port of the audio/music portion of the program.

Just in case you didn't know Emby developers Audio books are a thing.

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Lorties

It’s only a workaround but I can now stream audio books in Emby with a resume function.
For this work around your books will have to be in or converted to MP3 format.
 

I created a folder named My Audiobooks. I then copied all my books into that folder. Of course your audio books will need to be in their own separate folders within the My Audiobooks folder.  If you want a book cover image then you will have to download it and save it within the books folder. I named all mine cover.jpg and Emby then added them.

 

I then changed the extension of the .MP3 files to .MP4

Then in Emby I added a new TV library that I named AudioBooks and pointed it to the My AudioBooks folder.

 

I used fre:ac to convert and advanced renamer to batch convert the file extensions. 

 

Everything works, plays the next file, etc. however the screen auto rotates to landscape when playing starts.

Edited by Lorties
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skidmarks

A user is starting to use a audio book library that i created a few years back...  I personally have very little interest, but a household member has taken a liking to audio books.  After hearing back that it is not very user friendly i had to check it out.  I have to agree!

 

The main issue that really needs to be addressed is the lack of the server to remember where you left off at.  You can fast forward 10 seconds at a time to get kind of back where you were in a chapter, in roku, but i never realized some of these chapters are 40 / 50 minutes long.

 

I have covers, that i did manually, and all my books i converted over to mp3.  So all the chapters are correct.  So really the only big issue for me is not having the play location saved on exit.

 

Video files the server remembers.  Can, at least, files within the audio book library get this same kind of feature?

 

Thanks!

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  • 2 weeks later...

The tracking of the audio files is not bad .. but if I want to continue the audiobook he plays the file and then it is over ... if I continue it, then he must insert all the files of the album which are unseen again in the playback queue ... that would be nice and a unique feature

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  • 3 months later...

Hi, is there a plan to improve the audiobook part?

1. Resume Audiobooks

2. Dashboard overview for Audiobooks shows tracks instead of complete album

3.....

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hobesman

I've put together a list of thoughts I've gathered from my own experience and from other users' input. Some thoughts about what audiobook support is missing in Emby:

Top priority features:

  • store album position (not just track position) and when starting the album, go to that track/position instead of track 1
  • adjustable playback speed (a dealbreaker for me, but some might disagree)
  • when "continue listening" is used, queue up entire album into "now playing"

"Nice to have" features (in no particular order):

  • Finish distinguishing media type from Music (still says "latest music" in web, and when downloading on mobile, it puts audiobooks in the "Music" folder, and other similar relics)
  • limit saved progress to one track per album. (That way when you resume an album, there's clearly one place you mean for it to resume from. If you play a few minutes of chapter one, then realize you already finished that chapter and start the next track, you want it to save the progress in track 2, and forget that you played half of chapter 1.)
  • metadata agent for matching artwork and descriptions
  • separate metadata fields for author AND narrator
  • multiple author tags that can allow books to appear under both authors
  • handling of non-square cover art
  • keep track of "in progress" or "continue watching" audiobook albums (add to home screen similar to movies, and create "recently listened books/albums" and "Recently added books/albums" in "Audiobooks" library type, instead of recently added/played tracks as it is now)
  • skip ahead/back in larger (or custom) increments (e.g. 1 minute; currently an app-wide setting) and perhaps separate buttons for small and large jumps (keep 10 second button, but add a new 1 minute or 3 minute button)
  • apply skipping ahead/back to progress in the album, not just the track, i.e. if you're ten seconds into a track and you press "skip back 1 minute" then allow it to go back to before the end of the previous track. Sometimes track boundaries are arbitrary.
  • go back a few seconds automatically when resuming, especially after a long pause or being stopped (restart the word/phrase; could be an optional setting; would be nice for video as well...)
  • sleep timer to stop playback after a given amount of inactivity
  • remember furthest played position in book/album (similar to furthest read position on Kindle) so that if you accidentally start over, or have to jump back for something, you can jump forward to the autosaved furthest location again
  • enable resetting of furthest played position, if you want to start a book over, or accidentally jumped to the end
  • display album duration on album info page
  • show album progress/total duration in playback screen, not just track progress/duration
  • allow shuffling albums, not just tracks
  • somehow account for series of books, perhaps a new tag to account for being in a series and what number in the series. Thus when you finish book one, it can suggest book 2.
  • Perhaps add a "series" view similar to collections.
  • Somehow also account for some books being in multiple series (e.g. book 12 of series A is also book 2 of the spinoff series).
  • Somehow also account for different books in a series having different authors. 

Just my thoughts, but those top three or four would be enough for me to switch to Emby full time for my audiobook needs. And the rest would take it from "workable" to awesome.

 

Many of these could be summed up as: treat audiobook albums as a single media item for most purposes (showing progress/duration, storing resume position, marking as complete, jumping forward/backward, showing recommendations of albums instead of random tracks, shuffling albums instead of tracks, recently played albums instead of tracks, queue up album instead of track when resuming, etc.)

Edited by hobesman
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