[HomerJau]

@black_eagle If you are looking at supporting chapters in mp3 and Kodi already supports chapters in m4b could you please also consider allowing mp4 and m4a audio files to support chapters too, where chapters are songs (tracks).

As you know, there are now hundreds of Blu-ray Audio releases (and downloads) of high res albums with Dolby Atmos immersive mixes and there are many Kodi users desperate to hear these as gapless albums AND to see and select individual songs without the audio glitch caused by AVRs syncing at a new file.

To remove sync glitch we need the original Atmos stream unsplit. We can’t split the stream into individual song files.

The current Kodi workaround is to use a Cue file with and mka file with no chapters.

The ideal solution is have Kodi read an album mka, m4a or mp4 with chapters where the chapters contain the song titles. For minimum effort by end users and for Kodi devs, I would think an mp4/m4a with chapters is best solution as mp4/m4a file tagging is already supported in Kodi and many tagging programs. The only work for Kodi devs is to recognise m4a/mp4 files with chapters and read the chapters as songs, read the file tags as album tags.

Currently Kodi sees an m4a as a song file, like it does with mp3. Please consider music support for chaptered m4a/mp4 if you are doing so for chaptered audiobooks.

I would be very happy to help on this with testing and providing some input if you point me at the current code in Kodi. Please PM me if required.

Thanks.

[HeresJohnny]

I'm not exactly sure if we are on the same page, but I have ripped my Dolby Atmos Blurays to song files and they play without a hitch. Container format in my case is .mka though, not .mp4. Currently the .mka files will show up as "Singles" in Kodi which is obviously undesireable. It would be better if .mka could be seen by Kodi as "song" files which are part of a tagged album OR as audiobook chapters and if that could be distinguished via a special tag for audiobooks - in "genre" for example - or, by a certain naminig convention in filename, like "...Audiobook.mka".

[freebase1ca]

Audiobook and chapter support is all great, but I really wish we could have a simple source of type "Audio" in addition to the "Video" and "Music" types.  I am afflicted with a common kodi user problem of being a media hoarder.  I want to listen to all my media through one interface - Kodi.  My audio files aren't just music.  They are also audio books, podcasts, and radio transmissions like news programs.  My latest frustration is recording radio programs but having no way to track whether I have already listened to them.  I want an "Audio" source to just act like a "Video" source and track whether I have listened to a file and allow me to resume as well.  I'm looking for this approach because the files that get generated by the recording program are just basic - stored in the format of the source stream with no metadata.

[jbinkley60]

Audiobook and chapter support is all great, but I really wish we could have a simple source of type "Audio" in addition to the "Video" and "Music" types.  I am afflicted with a common kodi user problem of being a media hoarder.  I want to listen to all my media through one interface - Kodi.  My audio files aren't just music.  They are also audio books, podcasts, and radio transmissions like news programs.  My latest frustration is recording radio programs but having no way to track whether I have already listened to them.  I want an "Audio" source to just act like a "Video" source and track whether I have listened to a file and allow me to resume as well.  I'm looking for this approach because the files that get generated by the recording program are just basic - stored in the format of the source stream with no metadata.

I fully concur with you here.  I think Kodi is slowly moving in this direction.  As I mentioned last year, there are media sharing solutions which do this working with Kodi but typically are only practical if you have multiple clients accessing your media and you want to move in this direction.  In my case I have over a dozen clients, Kodi and non-Kodi.  I like treating all audio files the same (regardless of extension or function) and having resume point capabilities and proper played indicators in the skins. 

For now I wrote this functionality into the information panel in the Mezzmo Kodi addon to get around this.  What's nice is that I can resume an audio file, across any client, without regards to size or chapters for all 12,000+ audio files I have in my library.    For audiobooks I typically put them into about 90 minute tracks  because I copy them into my phone for listening too.  I find it easier to manage 6-8 or so 90 minute files vs. 60+ or more individual chapter files. 


Thanks,

Jeff

[randallspicher]

I solved my audiobook (and BBC Radio play series) issue by adding them to the TV Show library, rather then messing around with trying to get them to behave properly in the music library.

If your audiobooks (or radio play episodes) are split into multiple files (by chapter, or by broadcast date, etc), just rename them "Book or Radio Show Name s01e01.mp3"  (or whatever), and create a tvshow.nfo for them and nfo files for the episodes.  (if you use tinymedamanager or similiar, it makes it easy to create the nfo files and edit them.  for many BBC radio plays, you can even scan it (using the imdb scanner) as a lot of them have imdb entries.

Give them a Genre like "Audiobook" or "BBC Radio Plays" or whatever, and then it's easy to just use kodi to manage your progress from within the TV Show library, as that already tracks resume points and the like.