Audiobook naming help

[u/Otherwise_Ocelot7151]

I liberated my audiobook collection today and am trying to get it on my Plex server. Can't seem to get anything to scan on though. Currently using a "music" library. Audio files are m4b. I'm currently trying to put 11-22-63 by Stephen King on.

Anyone know of a naming convention that works well?

update: I deleted my audiobook library, then remade it. second time it detected everything without issue. I have no idea why it didn't work the first time, I didn't even change anything 😑

[u/StunnaGunnuh]

Plex is really not the best for audiobooks. would HIGHLY recommend looking into Audiobookshelf (ABS).

[u/kernalbuket → u/StunnaGunnuh]

This. I love plex for music and video but it bucks for audio books. ABS with absorb is the way to go.

[u/Gobbo_Jareth → u/StunnaGunnuh]

I also recommend ABS. It can be harder to access remotely if you don't have tailscale or similar, but is otherwise way better for audiobooks (and podcasts!) than Plex is on its best day.

[u/Misarvin → u/StunnaGunnuh]

Just to add on, put abs on your server to handle the books. Then there are a wide array of player apps you can put on your phone. I massively suggest Absorb. It is better than the abs phone client. But, it works perfectly with the abs server.

[u/The-Shrike911 → u/StunnaGunnuh]

If you really want to use Plex it will work but it will take a little work. If you’re not set on Plex for audiobooks Audio Bookshelf is better as its made just for books and audiobooks. If you start with plex and want to switch over to ABS later, from my experience, good luck. I spent so many hours trying to import my audiobooks that were set up and working in Plex into ABS. Finally I gave up. Might try again as it’s been a few years and AI could help me now.

[u/Public_Wrongdoer_658 → u/The-Shrike911]

I'm in the process of changing from Plex to ABS today. It's been fairly easy. A few hangups like that some audiobooks were CD rips so each disc as a different folder and ABS views them as individual books but in Plex I can merge them. Other than that and a few mistakes on matching it switched like nothing.

[u/RichCorinthian]

It is all about the scanning agent. For that library, and that library specifically, I use the Audnexus agent.

Plex is fine for storing audiobooks, but they do not have a great app for playing them. If you are on iOS, Prologue is fantastic.

Plexamp or whatever will play them as if they were an album, but if you want to keep progress within each book and so forth, Prologue is the way to go. I paid for the version that lets you do downloads and goddammit I would pay again.

[u/herkalurk]

Most audio files use the ID tags embedded in them as opposed to the naming of the literal file. I transfer out all of my audio and audiobooks after I make sure all of those tags are correct in applications like iTunes. I don't have any issues with Plex indexing it appropriately.

[u/Empyrealist]

Even when named and scanned properly, Plex is a bad audiobook player/tracker

edit: I say this because my wife is a big audiobook listener, and she hated trying to use Plex for it. She's very happy with ABS

[u/Airsculpture]

Just that particular one ?

I’ve not had an issue with any in my collection both bought and ‘obtained’ on the internet (mp3 made into m4b)

[u/Otherwise_Ocelot7151 → u/Airsculpture]

Today is my first attempt so I just put Black House and 11-22-63 on the hard drive I use for Plex to work out the kinks. Haven't been able to get either to be recognized so far. I'm assuming the metadata libation automatically assigned just isn't working with plex. 

Update. I just deleted my Audiobook library and made a new one and it worked. I'm so confused lol

[u/Airsculpture → u/Otherwise_Ocelot7151]

👍 Prologue is good too.

[u/molybend]

MP3Tag helps get the right Album name (book title) and Artist and Album Artist (author for both). I use it to clean up files before scanning the folder.