audiobook support

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rollon
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Nov 26, 2019 7:22 pm

audiobook support

Post by rollon »

Hi,
Is there a way to navigate within an audiobook? It would also be great, if you could see and edit bookmarks with the console/browser 8-)
watzaum
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Oct 22, 2020 3:11 am

Re: audiobook support

Post by watzaum »

You can listen to audiobooks with the "read" command but that is it. When I was listening with an Echo Show, I was asked by Alexa if I wish to resume from where I had left off. Great I thought, "yes" I replied, alas it restarted and even trying "OK" it still didn't resume. It always started from the beginning. Currently this renders listening to audiobooks useless unless you are going to finish it all in one go. Since Alexa seems to understand this function (likely available through Audible), I would request this - as per below.

Bookmarks would be great, but can't see how it could work as there is only one command; "read". If there were an ability to detect chapters, that too would be great. Does the audiobook format have anything to do with it? i.e. m4b, mp3, mobi etc.

Is it possible to facilitate the listen where you left off prompt with a "Yes" or "OK" and the audiobook will resume?
Srandall
Posts: 3
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2021 9:39 am

Re: audiobook support

Post by Srandall »

I'm very new to the skill but.

So far carrying on where we have left off works with Chaptered Mp3 books. If I read the book, then stop, then come back, it doesn't restart.
However the first time I tried it I told alexa to stop in so many minutes, and the position didn't seem to have saved with the sleep timer.
Being able to navigate by time would be really helpful as my kid tends to fall asleep to books, so being able to go back x minutes would be wonderful.
Jaffab
Posts: 6
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2021 5:58 pm

Re: audiobook support

Post by Jaffab »

Agreed.
I note that there seems to be a bug in that the saving of the 'current' place in an audio book sometimes works, sometimes doesnt. I have logged/commented on this before earlier in the year.
Very annoying....

"Alexa, Tell Mymedia to play (book name)"
"Do you want to resume where we left of?"
"yes" - note, you need to pause before you say "yes" otherwise it does not pick it up
"Ok, continuing where we left off"

.... reads chapter 2 and chapter 3.....

"Alexa, sleep in 90 minutes"

... following night....

"Alexa, Tell Mymedia to play (book name)"
"Do you want to resume where we left of?"
"yes" - note, you need to pause before you say "yes" otherwise it does not pick it up
"Ok, continuing where we left off"

.... AGAIN, reads chapter 2 and chapter 3 - because the bug means it has not rememebered the previous night.....

So you end up having to say "ship chapter" multiple times every night.

Frustrating.
Hiroari_Till_When
Posts: 5
Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:26 pm

Re: audiobook support

Post by Hiroari_Till_When »

Not to mention that you then have to either make sur you stop at the end of a chapter each time, or to listen once again to the first half or so of the chapter you were in the middle of when you stopped.
My Media is an awesome product, I really like it, but audiobooks really are its weak point.
bizmodeller
Posts: 458
Joined: Thu Nov 14, 2013 8:40 pm

Re: audiobook support

Post by bizmodeller »

Understand the issue and we've raised in our Jira backlog.

The issue is partly out of our control (not that helps) - we don't get periodic updates from the Alexa API during playbook. We only get updates on key events such as Pause and Stop, which is what we are already hooking into to save the position. However, we could do something like try to keep an internal timer ticking whilst the audio book is playing and periodically estimate the playback position until we get a "proper" event. WYT?
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