Comments on: Importing audio book CDs into iTunes

By: Andy

Andy — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 18:05:07 +0000

Great article!

However, I couldn’t find the “itunes scripts” or anything in the iTunes help to “make bookmarkable” however, I was able to manually change the extension to m4b in Finder which seems to work just fine.

I am using iTunes 6, and this is my first experience with a mac.

By: Matt G

Matt G — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 15:25:59 +0000

This is my first real experience with apple, and overall I’m impressed. I’m not the biggest fan of iTunes, but it gets the job done. The ipod itself hasn’t let me down, with the exception of this freezup business which is hard to blame on apple since it’s really a workaround. I’m also optimistic that they’ll fix it.

I’ll try changing to stereo. I’ve got plenty of space on the ipod (60GB) and I don’t really need to keep the books on there after I listen anyway. Not all of them anyway.

Thanks for the updates…I’ll post my results.

Matt

By: Alderete

Alderete — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 05:12:08 +0000

Matt: Stereo should indeed fix the problem, at the expense of twice as much disk space, on both your computer and your iPod. In step 7 of the import settings above, choose Stereo for your channels setting of the AAC Encoder, and that’ll probably make the problem go away.

For me, struggling with disk space issues on both my laptop and my iPod, using up more disk space hasn’t seemed worth it. But then, I’m eternally optimistic that Apple will fix the problem…perhaps not the likeliest thing to pin my hopes on!

By: Matt G

Matt G — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 03:34:01 +0000

Interesting… I’ll have to do more research on the mono acc files creating the lockups. Perhaps I can rip my audiobooks stereo acc? Is there such a thing?

Maybe I’ll try a higher bitrate, or something. It’s quite troublesome havinthe lockups.

By: Alderete

Alderete — Tue, 08 Nov 2005 01:27:00 +0000

Matt: What you are describing is what I was referring to above when I wrote:

Note: There are reports that mono AAC files can cause lockups on iPods when played. Doesn’t happen to me. Your mileage may vary.

Unfortunately, it has started happening, on both my and my wife’s iPods. Not sure what the cause, or if there is hope that it’ll ever be fixed in an iPod Update. It’s intermittent, which I’m sure is making crazy any engineers working on the issue…

By: Matt G

Matt G — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 21:15:30 +0000

I’m using:
60GB Ipod photo
iTunes for windows

The instructions worked well for importing cd audiobooks. After listening to 4 or 5 full books, I’m seeing one consistent problem though. I wonder if anyone else is seeing it.

While listening to a book, if I pause the ipod and allow it to shut off… or if I set the sleep timer during and let it turn of while listening to the book, the ipod seems to crash. In order to get it back I have to reset it (by holding down the menu and center buttons.)

Has anyone seen this? Can anything be done?

Matt
KS, USA

By: Alderete

Alderete — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 03:33:02 +0000

Tom: On my system I have both audiobooks I’ve downloaded from Audible.com, and books I’ve imported myself. In both cases, they are recorded in 32kbps mono. An 8 hour book in Audible.com’s proprietary .aa format takes up about 110 megabytes of disk space, or just under 14 megs per hour of content.

For the books I’ve imported myself in AAC format, using the settings described above, The Maltese Falcon takes 103 megs for a little over 7 hours, which comes in at a little over 14 megs per hour of content, about half a megabyte more per hour. But I also perceive a noticeable improvement in the audio quality, too.

NanoUser: How did you get the audiobook onto your Nano in the first place? Don’t you already have it on a computer somewhere?

In any case, there are utilities which can copy the tracks off of an iPod and onto your computer. I haven’t used one, so I can’t recommend anything, but I found a dozen searching for “iPod” on VersionTracker just now. Here are a couple names: XPod, Escape Pod, iPodRip, iPody, PodWorks, etc…

By: NanoUser

NanoUser — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 01:24:32 +0000

How do i transfer audio books from ipod nano to computer? All the information I saw was for transfering the audio books to nano.

By: Tom

Tom — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 18:40:42 +0000

Nice topic.
I haven’t tried audiobooks yet, but I’m curious about how ‘big’ a book would fit on my iPod mini? Or, if I want to use it for listening to ‘books on CD’, how many MB would each CD use?
Does iTunes give you any way to see how many MB the download file is before you do it?

Thanks,
Tom

By: Alderete

Alderete — Thu, 03 Nov 2005 16:12:43 +0000

Carleen: I think, but am not certain, that if you open the Get Info box for those tracks in iTunes (be sure you’re using iTunes 5 or 6), and change three things, it might get the tracks out of your music lists:

In the Info tab, change the Genre to “Audiobook”.
In the Options tab, make sure the “Remember playback position” and “Skip when shuffling” options are checked.

Unfortunately, you can only set the Genre for all tracks at once in the Multiple Song Info version of the Get Info window; for the options items, you need to select the first track, choose Get Info, make the changes, and click the Next button, to work your way through all the tracks. Tedious, but it does go quickly.

Please let me know if this works for you!