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EmBook - Proper support for AudioBooks


Inrego

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Dibbes
23 hours ago, Inrego said:

I made a new app from scratch. It just started closed alpha testing. Currently it only supports Plex as backend, but Emby support is coming.

You can see more on reddit.com/r/AbooApp

I did wonder where you'd gone... :)

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  • 1 year later...
TXK57

A few things I see missing natively in the Emby app for audiobooks is auto rewind for when you pick back up in the book. Also being able to default to the Books section in the library. Thank you guys for building much of this directly into the app!

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  • 1 year later...
jprobins007

Just wondering what the status is on the EmBook plugin.  It would be a great thing since Emby seems to work so poorly with audiobooks.

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1 minute ago, jprobins007 said:

Just wondering what the status is on the EmBook plugin.  It would be a great thing since Emby seems to work so poorly with audiobooks.

Hi, why do you think Emby works poorly with audiobooks? Please create feature requests for new things you'd like to see with Emby audiobook support and we'll be happy to look at them.

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jprobins007

Yes, I should have done that. I will put something up in that forum. The biggest problem seem to be the inability for FF/Rew to work on audiobooks and the inability of Emby to keep the place in a partially listened to audiobook.

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negativzeroe
48 minutes ago, jprobins007 said:

Yes, I should have done that. I will put something up in that forum. The biggest problem seem to be the inability for FF/Rew to work on audiobooks and the inability of Emby to keep the place in a partially listened to audiobook.

That has been the status quo since they implemented it in what, 2016? I got so fed up with crossing my fingers that my progress was saved I switched to Audiobookshelf. It's built to be an audiobook player, not a forked music player that is Jerry rigged by literally renaming "Albums" to "Books".

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5 minutes ago, negativzeroe said:

That has been the status quo since they implemented it in what, 2016? I got so fed up with crossing my fingers that my progress was saved I switched to Audiobookshelf. It's built to be an audiobook player, not a forked music player that is Jerry rigged by literally renaming "Albums" to "Books".

Actually there has been a lot of audio book development since then. I would give it another try.

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negativzeroe
15 minutes ago, Luke said:

Actually there has been a lot of audio book development since then. I would give it another try.

I know, I switched either late last year or early this year. I still have Emby running movies, TV, music and mixed content. And according to jprobbins, there are still issues with progress.

Just went and looked. Metadata still looks at musicbrainz which is half worthless, doesn't handle narrators, doesn't handle series, still categorizes genre as Audiobooks, doesn't show book duration and I'd wager the playback speed still resets.

Sorry man but I doubt this can be fixed, it needs to be written for audiobooks to begin with, not trying to drag the music library clone in a different direction.

Edited by negativzeroe
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On 9/5/2023 at 7:01 PM, negativzeroe said:

 

Just went and looked. Metadata still looks at musicbrainz which is half worthless, doesn't handle narrators, doesn't handle series, still categorizes genre as Audiobooks, doesn't show book duration and I'd wager the playback speed still resets.

Sorry man but I doubt this can be fixed, it needs to be written for audiobooks to begin with, not trying to drag the music library clone in a different direction.

@negativzeroeyou realize that if musicbrainz is not suitable for your content, that you can easily turn it off in library options, right?

Going forward, we'll turn this off for new audiobook libraries by default. Will that resolve your issue?

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negativzeroe
3 hours ago, Luke said:

@negativzeroeyou realize that if musicbrainz is not suitable for your content, that you can easily turn it off in library options, right?

Going forward, we'll turn this off for new audiobook libraries by default. Will that resolve your issue?

Not at all, I was just making a point as to how far off in left field the implementation is. If you or anyone on the team actually consumes audiobooks as content, run Audiobookshelf for a week and you'll see the difference, saving progress not withstanding.

Edited by negativzeroe
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7 hours ago, negativzeroe said:

Not at all, I was just making a point as to how far off in left field the implementation is. If you or anyone on the team actually consumes audiobooks as content, run Audiobookshelf for a week and you'll see the difference, saving progress not withstanding.

Can you try it again and disable those metadata sources, and then provide your feedback? We're happy to take a look at it. Thanks !

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I will add that it's a flaw in design philosophy to associate Audiobooks with Podcasts so that each individual track has its own cover, it's own description, and can be reordered in the book with the drag of a mouse/finger. In addition, embedded chapters and separate tracks are displayed differently in the UI.

I believe it to be a problem that the people designing the Audiobook portion of the app never actually listen to audiobooks, and so don't fully understand what the optimal solution should be. Case in point when one of the two primary people working on the project ask a user why they think it works poorly. That speaks to how little that dev uses it. You ask us for input on what changes we desire to have, but you don't understand why those changes are necessary. And certainly you can't come to the conclusion to add certain features on your own. What that all means is that the experience ends up being barebones.

Audiobookshelf has only been in existence for a couple of years, and yet people have been asking both Emby and Plex, for quite a bit longer than that, for audiobook features that never get implemented. So Emby has had plenty of opportunity to be a contender in the audiobook space, but at this point it's not a good enough experience to use when a better one exists. The primary hurdle to adopting Audiobookshelf is that its primary install method is Docker. But now, because I use Docker, I have migrated my Emby install to it as well.

I would give feedback if it was considered but it doesn't appear to be. I pointed out several problems almost a year ago, but they have not been addressed.

Edited by Chyron
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negativzeroe
On 9/7/2023 at 11:47 AM, Luke said:

Can you try it again and disable those metadata sources, and then provide your feedback? We're happy to take a look at it. Thanks !

Echoing @Chyron

If anyone on the team actually listened to audiobooks and came from a proper audiobook player, we wouldn't be having this conversation because it would be painfully apparent to you guys already. Metadata is by far the least important aspect here.

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53 minutes ago, Chyron said:

I will add that it's a flaw in design philosophy to associate Audiobooks with Podcasts so that each individual track has its own cover, it's own description, and can be reordered in the book with the drag of a mouse/finger. In addition, embedded chapters and separate tracks are displayed differently in the UI.

I believe it to be a problem that the people designing the Audiobook portion of the app never actually listen to audiobooks, and so don't fully understand what the optimal solution should be. Case in point when one of the two primary people working on the project ask a user why they think it works poorly. That speaks to how little that dev uses it. You ask us for input on what changes we desire to have, but you don't understand why those changes are necessary. And certainly you can't come to the conclusion to add certain features on your own. What that all means is that the experience ends up being barebones.

Audiobookshelf has only been in existence for a couple of years, and yet people have been asking both Emby and Plex, for quite a bit longer than that, for audiobook features that never get implemented. So Emby has had plenty of opportunity to be a contender in the audiobook space, but at this point it's not a good enough experience to use when a better one exists. The primary hurdle to adopting Audiobookshelf is that its primary install method is Docker. But now, because I use Docker, I have migrated my Emby install to it as well.

I would give feedback if it was considered but it doesn't appear to be. I pointed out several problems almost a year ago, but they have not been addressed.

Audio books are not associated with podcasts just fyi.

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On 9/14/2023 at 10:29 AM, Luke said:

Audio books are not associated with podcasts just fyi.

If that is the case, then there is no reason to have individual descriptions or covers for each and every chapter/track; nor the ability to reorder tracks. Also, separating tracks and embedded chapters in the UI is confusing and unintuitive.

So, either way it's done wrong. Either you're assuming audiobooks function the same as podcasts and so the reasoning why UI elements remain is because of a flawed concept; or you don't associate the two, and then the explanation just comes down to that it's unfinished.

 

Don't get me wrong. I like Emby, and I use it regularly for video. And I will be happy to provide specific feedback, in a constructive manner, as to why it's not an optimal experience for audiobooks. But I need you to have an understanding, beyond the surface level of what I'm saying, of why I'm saying it. I need you to actually use it for audiobooks so you can understand why it needs improvement, beyond just the bare minimum of basic functionality.

Then we won't have to have a back-and-forth as to why Author corresponds to the Artist tag, and Narrator corresponds to the Composer tag; or why Audnexus is a better source for metadata than Musicbrainz; or that audiobook collections should not pull metadata/covers from themoviedb; among other things. The current implementation for audiobooks still leaves much to be desired, and it would benefit the process if the people working on it experienced first-hand why that is.

Edited by Chyron
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On 9/19/2023 at 3:16 PM, Chyron said:

The current implementation for audiobooks still leaves much to be desired, and it would benefit the process if the people working on it experienced first-hand why that is.

This! I just logged in to second this. Please just try using emby with audiobooks for maybe a week or so. You will run into many UX-issues which really stress you out.

 

Additionally I have a lot of problems with continuing audiobooks from where I stopped. Many chapters will show as 80% completed looking at the progress bar although I listened to them fully. They are not marked as done. When I try to play them again it immediately skips to the next chapter. It's all a bit confusing. I think a lot of it could be solved using a clear guide and/or the developers actually using it for audiobooks for something like a week.

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