m4b aac audiobook support with jellyfin web on safari for iOS

[rayb]

Hello,

When I try to play a m4b aac audiobook on Safari (and FF) for iOS 17 I get this error:
"Playback Error"
"This client isn't compatible with the media and the server isn't sending a compatible media format"

The associated logs are here:
  jellyfinartofwar.txt (Size: 6.47 KB / Downloads: 45) but don't seem too helpful.
Transcoding has the default settings and is turned on.

The audiobook in question is the art of war, which is in public domain here with this specific m4b file. I have the same issue with other audiobook files too.

Playback works fine on FF/Chrome on Mac and on Jellyfin android.

I tried to dig around and see if others were experiencing this issue. The most relevant thing I saw was this GitHub post "[Issue]: m4b files not play with iOS app", which has no resolution. There is also this thread which suggests using swiftfin which could be okay but I prefer to get web playback working.

I don't know much about how jellyfin works but if I had to guess the issue seems to be that the server doesn't realize that iOS needs a different encoding.

Would appreciate any help getting this fixed.

PS: I've turned on email notifications for this thread so hopefully I can reply quickly.

[TheDreadPirate]

Have you tried Jellyfin Mobile on iOS?

[rayb]

Have you tried Jellyfin Mobile on iOS?

I get the same error with Jellyfin Mobile on iOS.

[TheDreadPirate]

Sorry. Just got around to downloading your example audiobook and adding it to a test library.

That Art of War audiobook worked as expected for me. Tested on Jellyfin-web in Chrome on Chrome OS and my Android phone with the official Android client.

Which browser are you using? Safari? Is it possible to test with Firefox and Chrome?

Also, interesting to know that there is a group with public domain audiobooks.

[rayb]

The problem is Safari specific.

The book works fine for me on Android (FF/Chrome). It also works fine for me on FF/Chrome on Mac.

It doesn't work on Safari for iOS 17 or Mac OS 14.3

However, it look like someone has just put up a patch to fix this.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/pull/10980

[TheDreadPirate]

The problem is Safari specific.

The book works fine for me on Android (FF/Chrome). It also works fine for me on FF/Chrome on Mac.

It doesn't work on Safari for iOS 17 or Mac OS 14.3

However, it look like someone has just put up a patch to fix this.

https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/pull/10980

Yep.  I was chatting with the author of that PR last night about this subject.