EmBook - Proper support for AudioBooks

[daedalus 434]

leaving caching things beside (don't know why this should be different from general music stuff) most claimed features i see are server related or useful for general usage

 

Features

    Browsing only AudioBook libraries on the server                                           <-- why? if the official app can handle it
    Auto pre-cache files for playback                                                                  <-- why needed here and not for music?
    Settings to pre-cache next X minutes or audio-files                                       <-- why needed here and not for music?
    Setting to auto-cleanup files that are earlier than current progress              <-- why needed here and not for music?
    Saving progress on Emby server                                                                  <-- server thing
    Resuming from Emby server progress (so resume on different device)        <-- server thing
    Media notification with play/pause                                                                 <-- on the playing device? apps still have this
    Showing cover and description of book from Emby metadata                        <-- server thing

    Multi-server support                                                                                       <-- server thing
    Control Playback from Android Wear                                                             <-- shouldn't this be implemented by default for the playing app?

 

TO-DO List
    Option to automatically rewind X seconds when resuming (to catch up on last sentence from your last listening session) (already started research how to do). <-- server thing, resume settings
    Sleep timer (stop playing after X minutes)                                                                                                                                                                                       <-- why needed here and not for everything else?
    Tap notification to go to "Currently Playing" in app.                                                                                                                                                                         <-- why needed here and not for everything else?
    Show a "mini" version of "Currently Playing" on all pages of the app. Play/pause, seek, name and possibly cover. Tap to open full "Currently Playing".               <-- already implemented
    Mark files as "watched" in Emby when you've listened to a file.                                                                                                                                                        <-- server thing, default behavior

 

but hey you are the devs

Edited June 2, 2018 by daedalus

[Luke 42077]

Those are all great suggestions, and not all of them are specific to audio books. can you please create feature request topics? Thanks !

[daedalus 434]

He has, but a lot of the work required is at the UI level in the apps.

 

please don't take this as ill will but facing the current implemented audiobook "support" consisting of showing simply the plain folder structure only this was not so obvious

[daedalus 434]

Those are all great suggestions, and not all of them are specific to audio books. can you please create feature request topics? Thanks !

 

i try to convince @Inrego not to reinvent the wheel and make this thing better for us all cause he really seems to care

[Inrego 76]

i try to convince @Inrego not to reinvent the wheel and make this thing better for us all cause he really seems to care

When I started out with 2.0, I also had a dream to implement as much as possible in emby core. But I think that Luke is too busy with other things, to do code review etc for my pull requests.

 

As an example, my latest pull request is over 6 months old, with no response as to why it hasn't been merged: https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby.Naming/pull/9

 

This pull request should help recognize which files are part of a book, so emby can recognize them as books instead of folders and files.

 

So with what I have to work with, making a plugin and separate app makes most sense for me right now. Once 2.0 is up, I may even make my own backend, with web interface as well.

 

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[daedalus 434]

:blink:

sry didn't know you was snookered by the dev

i'm not surprised

if they don't care keep up your good work

[Inrego 76]

:blink:

sry didn't know you was snookered by the dev

i'm not surprised

if they don't care keep up your good work

I think he cares, but it's a secondary feature of emby, and I think it's not really being prioritized

 

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[LuFi 0]

Please let me know if there is somthing new, better Audiobook Support would be nice. 

 

regards 

 

LuFi

[Luke 42077]

Thanks for the feedback.

[Dibbes 514]

I think he cares, but it's a secondary feature of emby, and I think it's not really being prioritized

 

Sent from my ONEPLUS A5010 using Tapatalk

Do we have any nice new thingy's to look forward to soon though? [emoji4]

 

 

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Edited June 12, 2018 by Dibbes

[Inrego 76]

Do we have any nice new thingy's to look forward to soon though? [emoji4]

 

 

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For the rest of this month, I am road tripping in the US

 

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[Dibbes 514]

Hope your road trip was good

 

For the rest of this month, I am road tripping in the US

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[Inrego 76]

Hope your road trip was good

 

Yes it was great. And actually I did find some time over there to develop som more. I've looked around, and currently there aren't any good up-to-date libraries for audio playback across platforms.

So since I will have to implement it for all platforms anyway, I thought I might as well just make a library myself, which might be useful for other people.

 

It's open source, but still far from ready to use. If anyone wants to follow progress on that, you can find it here: https://github.com/Inrego/Xam.Plugin.AudioPlayer

[letterman 40]

re-coding still in progress? I would love this plugin

[Inrego 76]

re-coding still in progress? I would love this plugin

Still in progress, albeit very slow.

 

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[leram84 2]

Considering this is still far and away the most promising abook solution out there, i want to make sure i dont dig myself into a hole while i prepare my lib. Will this naming structure cause any issues w embook?
 

audiobooks/Brandon.Sanderson/The.Stormlight.Archive/01.The.Way.Of.Kings.2010/01-54.The.Way.Of.Kings.64Kb.Audible-AAX.MaM.mp3

Edited October 11, 2018 by leram84

[Inrego 76]

 

Considering this is still far and away the most promising abook solution out there, i want to make sure i dont dig myself into a hole while i prepare my lib. Will this naming structure cause any issues w embook?

 

audiobooks/Brandon.Sanderson/The.Stormlight.Archive/01.The.Way.Of.Kings.2010/01-54.The.Way.Of.Kings.64Kb.Audible-AAX.MaM.mp3

That should be fine. But EmBook is still some ways from being ready again, unfortunately. It's hard to find the time.

However, once it's ready again - it will probably be a free app. Because I think paid users deserve more time and dedication than I will be able to give. And the amount of users/purchases was/will probably be in the low end, which will not entice me to prioritize it over my job or real life.

[leram84 2]

Yeah, i get it... dev always takes 3x as long as planned lol. But im certain you're wrong about the userbase! It's actually the biggest reason im dying for you to build this thing. There is a massive appetite for something like this (a server/client abook app), and it kills me that orgs like plex/emby dont seem to see that. Abooks in general are exploding in popularity lately. Smart audiobook player for android alone has +1mil dl's in the current crazy fragmented abook landscape, i have no doubt something w android AND ios apps with emby as a backbone to handle cloud sync/user management/cross platform progress would eclipse those numbers eventually. Any past metrics for this app can't really forecast the popularity you'll see once its actually out of beta and we users start sharing it with our friends in earnest. I'm deeply involved in several OSS communities around plex/emby and see this issue discussed almost daily. I'm generally a huge advocate for open source, but in this case, with the lack of developers in the space, i would actually love to see you charge for this app and become successful enough that you CAN quite your dayjob But in any case im just thrilled that you're still at it and wanted to pass some encouragement along. I got nothing but high hopes for this project! gl!

[mediacowboy 438]

I really can't wait for you to get this built. Are the changes that Luke made for audiobooks any help?

[Inrego 76]

Yeah, i get it... dev always takes 3x as long as planned lol. But im certain you're wrong about the userbase! It's actually the biggest reason im dying for you to build this thing. There is a massive appetite for something like this (a server/client abook app), and it kills me that orgs like plex/emby dont seem to see that. Abooks in general are exploding in popularity lately. Smart audiobook player for android alone has +1mil dl's in the current crazy fragmented abook landscape, i have no doubt something w android AND ios apps with emby as a backbone to handle cloud sync/user management/cross platform progress would eclipse those numbers eventually. Any past metrics for this app can't really forecast the popularity you'll see once its actually out of beta and we users start sharing it with our friends in earnest. I'm deeply involved in several OSS communities around plex/emby and see this issue discussed almost daily. I'm generally a huge advocate for open source, but in this case, with the lack of developers in the space, i would actually love to see you charge for this app and become successful enough that you CAN quite your dayjob But in any case im just thrilled that you're still at it and wanted to pass some encouragement along. I got nothing but high hopes for this project! gl!

 

Thank you for the kind words. I do occassionally run into a few shortcomings in Emby that are not so easy to fix by plugin. So after app is in a decent state, I am thinking about building a new backend as well. But most wanted features are possible with Emby, so for now I will just do the app with plugin. Quitting my day job will probably not be a reality unless EmBook explodes. It's a really great job, and family business (I am working for my uncle).

 

I really can't wait for you to get this built. Are the changes that Luke made for audiobooks any help?

Which changes in particular? I've been a little out of touch lately.

[mediacowboy 438]

 

 

Which changes in particular? I've been a little out of touch lately.

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/61079-3.6.0.3---db-changes&do=findComment&comment=610806

[Inrego 76]

https://emby.media/community/index.php?/topic/61079-3.6.0.3---db-changes&do=findComment&comment=610806

Thanks, I'll probably need to dive further into that. But how I understand it, there's no new functionality - just a new content type so audio books are not mixed with text books.

[mediacowboy 438]

Thanks, I'll probably need to dive further into that. But how I understand it, there's no new functionality - just a new content type so audio books are not mixed with text books.

It's a start in the right direction.

[leram84 2]

yeah, a standalone book app really is the dream, but theres soooo much wheel reinventing that it definitely feels like pie in the sky. But just for fun, this would be my wishlist:
 

A full plex/emby-like server/client app with user management and PROPER db support. None of that sqlite shit.... there are too many books for that. Something that does ebooks, abooks, and comics all in one app. A library browsing ui like calibre-web (I recently built a new ui for that to match my plex ecosystem https://github.com/leram84/layer.Cake/tree/master/caliBlur ) that uses goodreads/comicvine as metadata agents and lets you bundle abooks and ebooks into a single entry (maybe eventually with some whispersync type functionality once epub3 gets off the ground). All the progress sycing and offline support you get from emby, and the built in epub/cbz reader a la calibre-web/ubooquity. THAT... that right there, would be the holy grail of book support

[VaporTrail 66]

There's been further Audiobook development server-side since August. AFAIK resuming chapter files is now possible. I haven't been beta testing Emby, so I don't know the state of the nation really.

 

Personally I'd love to leave Plex & use Emby exclusively, but until I see the equivalent to what macr0dev's done with Plex + Audible metadata scraping, there's little reason to switch.

 

Is there anything useful to gain from reviewing his code @@Inrego? https://github.com/macr0dev/Audiobooks.bundle

 

Here's the discussion on the Plex forum: https://forums.plex.tv/t/rel-audiobook-metadata-agent-audible/199579

 

Here's a couple screenshots from inside Plex. The artist images/info are scraped by Last.fm automatically.

 

 

 

 

Hope that helps.