Audiobook resume/rw/ff

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

I have seen reports that some people have enabled audiobooks and have rudimentary functionality. That is the resume functionality works and I have even seen some people reporting that ff and rw work to some extent. I have been unable to get any of these basics wrking for audiobooks at all.

 

I have chosen the audiobook library type.

I have set resume percentages at 1 for minimum and 100 for maximum.

My books are all in single large files and are simple basic mp3s.

I have found that I can, in the web browser, start a book playing and then use the file position pointer to move wherever I want in the book. However if I stop playing and exit the browser when I reenter I can only start over from the beginning.

 

I have also tested audiobook functionality in several clients (Roku, Fire TV, Shield TV) and on none of those can I resume even after allowing a book to play for more than 30 minutes.

 

The bottom line is I cannot get even basic audiobook functionality working and I would really like to.

 

I am willing to try just about anything to get it working I just need guidance.

 

My current server version is 4.1.0.26 which is, I think, the latest beta.

 

I would like to get correct functionality on at least one of my clients and I do not much care which one even in the web browser would be OK.

 

Thanks for any and all help.

 

BTW: I do not need or care about metadata or artwork or anything except correctly playing, resuming, fast forwarding and rewinding the books. Of course the fancy stuff would be good but, for me, it is unneeded.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Gilgamesh_48

[ebr 14903]

Hi.  I believe the web app or the mobile apps will give you this basic functionality.  The TV apps are just lagging behind on this (but will get there eventually) because very few people listen to audio books on a TV.

 

Thanks.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

Hi.  I believe the web app or the mobile apps will give you this basic functionality.  The TV apps are just lagging behind on this (but will get there eventually) because very few people listen to audio books on a TV.

 

Thanks.

 

I have tried to resume audiobooks in the web app and it simply does not work at all. I have tried in FireFox and Chrome without any success at all. What could I be doing wrong?

 

On your "few people listen to audiobooks on a TV" statement: I have to question that a bit. I do not listen on a TV but I have a Fire TV connected to my whole house audio system and I use that, using Plex, to listen to audiobooks. I just want to retire my remaining Plex server that is on my Shield TVthat has its only main purpose to server audiobooks.

 

I setup a playlist of several audiobooks on my Fire and I then can con control the Fire using Alexa throughout my house. I only have to "look" at the Fire interface once or twice a week to keep thinks running smoothly.

Edited April 29, 2019 by Gilgamesh_48

[mrfragger 39]

I tested out many audiobook apps to see what would get me by until Emby matures which I’m sure they will eventually. Some I tried tiReader, KyBook 3 (use it for my comics, PDFs, epubs and mobis) but crap as an audiobook player, BookPlayer (free but lacking), Audiobook Player SmartBook.

 

Anyway long story short I decided to go with mp3 Player Player which is $3. Have to zip up the audiobook then use a browser but it seems the best solution for now. However, after using so many ones I really hope Emby can eventually implement the following features:

 

- multiple bookmarks with saving a small bit of text to be able to give context to that bookmark

 

- adjustable skip/seek duration for forward and backward 5, 10, 15, 30, 60 or 120 sec

 

- sleep timer 5. 10, 15, 30mins or END of CHAPTER. Some apps didn’t have end of chapter and that drove me up the wall.

 

- display current time and amount of time left for the current chapter and also total duration of the entire book and a % indicating current position with total time read so far in the book.

 

- playback speed adjustment. I’d say increments of .20 should suffice.

 

- auto rewind. For example in mp3 audiobook player it has the following:

Move back 5 secs

After not playing for 1 min(s)

AND

Move back 30 secs

After not playing for 2 min(s)

 

- library of audiobooks should display total duration of the audiobook and file size.

That’s about it. We can always dream.

[mrfragger 39]

Guess I forgot to mention this is for iOS iPad and iPhone. I think you can resume now but only by going to Continue listening or continue watching but the problem is once it plays that track it stops and won’t jump to the next one.

Edited April 29, 2019 by mrfragger

[mrfragger 39]

This shows some of the things I mentioned in mp3 audiobook player pro. . Btw I think also Audibles app has a polished interface.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

I "can" use MediaMonkey to play audiobooks through a computer or Android device by I have yet to find a way to get the functionality I get from being ably to control the playback with Alexa on my Fire TV. Currently, using Plex, I can, once a playlist is started simply say "Alexa, play Fire TV" anywhere in my house and the books playing will start or stop.

 

I do not really want to have to keep a Plex server running on my Shield just for the audiobook functionality I desire. Which is why I want Emby to fully implement FF/RW/RESUME functionality for audiobooks.

 

BTW: I do not allow anything "i" in my house so the solutions for Apple products will not work for me.

[Luke 37009]

@@Gilgamesh_48 currently you can only resume at the individual track level within an audio books library. We plan to add album level resume in the future. thanks.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

@@Gilgamesh_48 currently you can only resume at the individual track level within an audio books library. We plan to add album level resume in the future. thanks.

 

Since all my audio books are single mp3 files that is not an issue. That is my audiobooks are just one track long.

 

However I cannot get any resume to work even on single tracks.

 

But, for me, this has become a good deal less urgent. Plex changed something or something changed on the Fire and I can no longer use Plex to reliably play audiobooks with long times spent paused as they exit back to the main screen and will not resume of paused for over a couple of hours.

 

This forced me to reinstall and configure MediaMonkey on a computer so it is attached to my whole house audio system and mount several keyboards, both wireless and wired, around the house so starting and stopping the playback is always within reach. Using this system I lose control via Alexa but that does not really matter too much because the keyboards work fine.

 

I would like to use Emby but I "think" the auto exit problem is really based in the operating system and that would mean that Emby would exit just like Plex does.

 

For now I have a solution for my audiobooks and that is, for me, the important thing. I will live with the limitations until something better comes along.

 

When you do get a solution that will work for my setup on either the Fire or Roku I will be happy to test it but if the operating system forces a paused playback to exit after a few hours like happens now on both devices the solution will not work for me.

 

Thanks.

Edited May 4, 2019 by Gilgamesh_48

[BlindFish 5]

Hello,

looking for a good way to manage, share and listen to my audiobook collection, i recently stumbled across this project and thanks to docker i could easily give it a try.

 

I am currently running Version 4.2.0.13 beta and i have setup one library with content type 'audiobooks'. Somehow, the resume playback functionality seems to be broken as i am experiencing the following unexpected behaviour:

 

1. I am starting playbak of an audiobook consisting of one mp3 file and position the playhead somewhere in the middle and pause playback

2. i quit the android app and re-launch it again, the unfinished title shows up on home screen

3. tapping the unfinished title lets it re-start from the beginning

4. when performing steps 1 & 2, but re-starting playback within a web browser, everything seems to work as intended and playback resumes where it has been paused.

5. when starting the book from within a web browser and pausing it, the progress bar is shown properly on android, but playback always resumes from the beginning of the title.

 

What am i missing here? Is resuming only available on some platforms?

 

 

 

[Wondertje 10]

Yeah, the audiobook resume seems to not be working - same issue here. Based on another thread, it's also the same on iOS.

 

I currently just listen to whole chapters because of this, since remembering where you are is just a pain.

[BlindFish 5]

Thanks for your comment, although it's not what i wanted to hear :-(.

 

I am wondering how all these projects can still neglect to put some more effort into developement for proper support for this media type.

 

Did you try if the behaviour is different for downloaded content? Lacking a premiere subscription, i cannot find out myself.

[Wondertje 10]

I also don't have premiere unfortunately, so I can't tell 

[ebr 14903]

Hi.  The functionality isn't any different with Premiere.

 

Audio books are our least-used media type so we just haven't fully fleshed them out yet.

 

Thanks.

[daedalus 430]

Audio books are our least-used media type so we just haven't fully fleshed them out yet.

 

the fact that you are neglecting this since years, may be the cause that nobody wants to use it, cause it's unusable atm

[mrfragger 39]

Just wanna let people know what I’m doing in the meantime. I do hope Emby eventually gets around to support audiobooks.

 

On macOS I use a $5 app called Audiobook Builder which lets you drag a folder at a time after filling in the author and title fields. Now if there are muiltple CD folders sometimes I have to batch rename them to either CD1 - 001.mp3 .... CD5 - 001.mp3 or just sequentially name them 001.mp3, 002.mp3, etc. then Audiobook Bulider creates an m4b file that contains chapters and sometimes like 300+ chapters.. I encode all audiobooks at 32kpbs mono 22.05KHz using HE-AAC (High Efficiency AAC). I save about 50 to 80% in file size. Yes mp3 audio should be 320kbps but reading audio needn't but such high quality. 32kpbs is definitely more than go enough for the spoken voice. ImYou can optionally add some cover artwork if ya wish but not necessary. Usually every Audiobook m4b file is just one file under 330MB. If over then it’s like 2 parts then I keep in a folder.

 

So then on iOS I use free version of the app EverMusic or $3 pro version if ya wanna download folders. So I setup a WebDAV server and also have them on OneDrive for all my audiobooks. Evermusic can stream the m4b files and can resume position. Even in the settings you can click and hold the play button for 3 seconds to resume playback position if it’s not present if you closed the app. Also you can open the file in another audiobook app which I do. Or you can batch download the m4b files then open in once they’re all downloaded. So it can stream but it doesn’t support m4b chapters nor does it really allow playback of multiple audiobooks.

 

VLC on iOS can stream m4b files and has chapter support and can resume position. However once again closing out the VLC app or attempting to listen to many audiobooks doesn’t work and it doesn’t even have bookmark capability. But I love it with $5 VLC remote as it plays mp3 + cdg files on a computer for karaoke/ KTV support.

 

So I use $5 mp3 audiobook pro player which doesn’t stream but does support m4b chapters and is probably the best audiobook player I could find. I import it from EverMusic. I can open it up as a WebDAV server then batch copy folders into it but I prefer browsing via EverMusic. I do wish mp3 audiobook pro would let you turn off the title + chapters as many complete chapters are obscured. You can rotate it to landscape but then you’re limited to seeing max two chapters at a time which makes it tedious trying to scroll through tons of chapters if said audiobook happens to have quite a few chapters.

 

 

I tried Bound (no search or sorting), CloudBeats (can stream but no m4b chapter support) and about 5 other audiobook ones too.

 

So if/when Emby supports audiobooks I hope they support m4b chapters. Sleep timer would be nice but iOS has a built in timer for all audio apps simply by using a custom timer in the clock app and setting it to ‘stop playing’. But most importantly I think is that it shows like a recently played audiobooks showing the % progress listened to. Until that happens I suggest everyone get busy and reclaim 80% of disc space of you bloated audiobook files.

 

For Android users I think Smart audiobook player and Listen player are two popular ones but no idea if they stream or not.

[BlindFish 5]

Actually i think that there is a shipload of workarounds for this, but they shouldn't be neccessary after all.

 

In a blog post i recently wrote about my experiences with Plex, Amby, Booksonic and a bunch of other solutions, including WebDAV etc. None of the available competitors does what you would like to call a good job when it comes to audiobooks. That being said, it could really be as a USP these days. As there is - at least from my point of view - no better solution for managing ebook collections like Calibre, developers for media streaming solutions could set a defacto standard for audiobooks, too. An open source alternative for Audible with no DRM and multi platform support. In the case of Emby, Plex etc., the eco-system has already been developed and is widely accepted and used. And nearly every community is continually begging for a better support on this topic. So for me it looks more like a bad marketing decision not putting some minor effort into a usable solution.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

Just a little followup for those wanting to use MediaMonkey on a computer as a temporary workaround and control it via Alexia:

There is a skill called "Vicki" for Alexa that allows you to control your computer through Alexa.

It requires the Chrome browser installed and running with the "Vicki" extension enabled and I have only tested it on a computer that is only running Chrome and MediaMonkey. I have the computer set to put MediMonkey in the foreground and running full screen. (This is needed for reliable keyboard control without visual interface I suspect that the voice control would work without MediaMonkey always on top.) Chrome runs in the background.

The invoke command is "Tell Web Browser" and all I have tested are "Play" and "Pause"

I suspect that it can do a LOT more but that is all I need.

 

While this is not directly Emby related I now have a solid workaround for playing my audiobooks and I do not have to press a keyboard to start and stop them so the Emby developers, from my perspective, can take their time and get audiobooks right.

 

Even with this successful workaround I look forward to Emby getting audiobooks working right so I can take the computer down and just run a monitorless Emby client, like a Fire TV, in its place.

 

The commands I have tested are just "Alexa tell web browser play" and "Alexa tell web browser pause." I am quite sure there is a lot more the Vicki skill can do but that is all I need.

 

Thanks Emby folks for your effort.     

[Wondertje 10]

Yeah, audio books have no other function other than playing and stopping - regardless of which medium you use to play them with. They won't remember where you are, not even within single tracks even though that apparently has been claimed. Glad you found a work around that is at least functional, but it's too bad there's a need for it in the first place.

[Gilgamesh_48 942]

Yeah, audio books have no other function other than playing and stopping - regardless of which medium you use to play them with. They won't remember where you are, not even within single tracks even though that apparently has been claimed. Glad you found a work around that is at least functional, but it's too bad there's a need for it in the first place.

 

Just a little point. Emby does not reliably remember where you were however MediaMonkey does and will play multi chapter books just fine with full resume FF and RW abilities. 

[Luke 37009]

It isn't that we don't want to focus more on audiobooks, it is mainly an issue of time and resources.

[daedalus 430]

so if you are overchallenged since years, you have a serious problem in your management 

[Luke 37009]

We have a large suite of applications, and our core feature set keeps us pretty busy as it is.

[Wondertje 10]

With all due respect, I don't know a lot about developing these kinds of apps but, wouldn't a resume feature be comparatively easy to implement since it already exists on all other types of library? Surely the code for resuming a file can't differ that much between an .mp4 file in the video library and an .mp3 file in the audio book library?

[ebr 14903]

With all due respect, I don't know a lot about developing these kinds of apps but, wouldn't a resume feature be comparatively easy to implement since it already exists on all other types of library? Surely the code for resuming a file can't differ that much between an .mp4 file in the video library and an .mp3 file in the audio book library?

 

@@BlindFish

@@Wondertje

 

Hi.  We already have that.  Individual audio book files can be resumed just fine.

 

The issue is that audio books often consist of multiple files.  This requires us to be able to track resume as an index in a list of related files in addition to within an individual file.  This is something that doesn't currently exist anywhere else in the system.