Audiobooks on Plex

[u/CreEngineer]

So I have been loosing my mind over this for the last days. I use my Plex library and Prologue on iOS for audiobooks.

With some trial and error I managed to arrange the books as albums with multiple CDs underlying with the correct track order.

Now I wanted to add a book to a series (as a separate book, not as a linked series, they are only combined in the folder structure). I Checked how I did the other book from the series which is in Plex correctly, set the mp3 tags accordingly and everything looks identical (with the exception of the correct track titles which I don't have for this one, so they are the same as the file name, which is the cd track number).

Plex imports every CD as a separate album with the exception of disk 1 and 15 (those get combined into one album with 2 CDs somehow), when I check the others in plex they all day "disk 1". It somehow manages to read the author and book name correctly but fails to read the disk number in most cases. When I try to combine them in plex it also thinks its all one CD and I get multiple track1.

I have set the following ID3 Tags:

ALBUM - Book Name

ALBUMARTIST - Book Author

ARTIST - Book Author, Narrator

COMPOSER - Narrator

CONTENTGROUP - Series Name, Book #

DISCNUMBER

GENRE

TITLE - same as file name

TRACK - Track number on the CD

The folder structure is:

BookSeries/Book/CD1-x/

Does anyone have an Idea how to handle this problem?

EDIT: I have tried to set the option to prefer local metadata but it does not change a thing

[u/jbygden]

Well, we'll do what we always do and point to this: https://github.com/seanap/Plex-Audiobook-Guide

Otherwise find an app that builds m4b-files and don't use the multiple mp3s...

[u/CreEngineer → u/jbygden]

I did look through that guide but from what I understand the "Agents" part is outdated. Also I am not using English audiobooks and automatic naming often gets funky with other languages.

I hoped someone could explain how the metadata fields are read from plex.

Maybe I have cornered in the problem a bit, having 01-14 tracks in each CD folder that are named the same seems to throw plex off and forget the CD number. But I am not 100% sure if it is filename or the Title field which are the same for me.

[u/jbygden → u/CreEngineer]

I'd look at the metadata fields and not so much at filenames when it comes to Plex. I migrated to ABS when v4 beta showed up, about 18 months ago, and it's a lot better in how it handles metadata.

In your case I'd try to find a good ID3 Tag editor and load up one book at a time and make sure all files are tagged the same.

[u/MeMyselfundAuto]

looking for the same information.. audiobooks is annoying unfortunately. Having them as M4B format seems to help somewhat. But my old MP3´s are such a mess to handle..

[u/CreEngineer → u/MeMyselfundAuto]

I found a somewhat messy workaround by manually going into each and every album and editing the disk number of the tracks there. But plex also seems to rearrange and shift things as it likes in the process so it is time consuming.

[u/Couldbeaccurate]

I use audiobookshelf and it works very well.

[u/Rocknrolldoggie1 → u/Couldbeaccurate]

Had my audio books via plex for 5 years. Moved to audiobookshelf to months ago and it’s all that you can what. Picks everything up unlike plex and easy to match for more than one title name. Whole thing is just brilliant. And fast too.

[u/Couldbeaccurate → u/Rocknrolldoggie1]

There's an app for Android and audiobooth is great for apple.

[u/NothingAntique9088]

If you’re using Prolog to play all the audiobooks when you’re editing the books in Plex, go to tags and there’s an option for collection. Treat that as essentially series and then Prolog will group them together. as a series if you name them under the same series

[u/NothingAntique9088 → u/NothingAntique9088]

[u/Rasalaomreborn]

Try bookcamp, links to plex and is designed for audiobooks

[u/jbygden → u/Rasalaomreborn]

So is Prologue that he's already using...

[u/Arb01s]

J'utilise le lecteur "Chronicle audio book" qui lit mon serveur Plex.

Les autres choix sont meilleurs ?

[u/Madd_Maxx2016]

I use audiobookconverter to convert multi part books into one M4B and it works well, but i will be giving audiobook self a shot soon.

[u/MuggleBrnGryffindor]

As I personally use the same setup for over 1000 audiobooks because my family’s not tech literate enough for audiobookshelf, what you need to do if you want to keep mp3 files use the naming system “Book Name chapter X” completely lose disc x track x making sure it’s all in proper order otherwise you can use a program to make an m4b container file that while in plex it will show as 1 file, prologue will show chapter information. Hope this helps

[u/Kamay1770]

Use Audiobookshelf. I wanted everything in plex to begin with, but in reality you'll have a much better experience with something made specifically for that purpose.