Importing an audiobook from CD

Did you consider making a playlist? I've imported some audio books and made playlists of them. That way, you can adjust the order of each chapter/topic, etc. Hope this helps. Good luck!

hi John!

As I moved the tracks to the play list when I got to disc 2 it started to get out of order again.

just checking. do any of the techniques here help with ordering your playlist properly?

MacMuse, "Control track order on burned CDs and MP3 CDs", 11:19pm Oct 8, 2004 CDT

love, b

go to "get info". And in info put a zero in front were it would say 1a so it will say 01a the next one in the would be 02a and so on. that should take care of the issue.

John, did this get resolved? I've just bought an ipod just to listen to my collection of audiobook cds and had the same problem, i.e. tracks don't stay in the same order as they are on the cd's. The only work around I used was to create a new playlist and drag the chapters across in the correct order. This is a pain and wondered if there is a neater solution?

Here is what I do but it may not work for you (I do a lot of steps to get things just the way I want). I rip the Audiobook CDs using Audiograbber (freeware). Using this program I can define a naming convention for the files which automatically adds "01" to the track number for disc 1 and "02" for disc 2 etc. This way the files sort correctly because the track numbers go in sequence across discs (0101, 0102, 0201, 0202 etc.) Once I have all the wav files (I rip to wave and then convert but Audiograbber can also rip to mp3). I then use MediaJoiner (freeware) to put all the individual files into one big mp3 (it can combine and encode at the same time). Because all the files sort in order due to the naming convention, MediaJoiner keeps them in order when merging the file. I then import that one big MP3 into iTunes. From there you can synch it with your iPod or take the next step and convert to AAC and then change the new file's extension from *.m4a to *.m4b and reimport to take advantage of all the audiobook features. I like having one big file because the bookmark feature seems to only be useful if you can remember which track of your book you left off on. With one file, everytime you go back to your book the bookmark takes you right to your last place without having to get to the right track.

I do audiobooks a lot. First, create a playlist with the book's name. Then, the first CD in your drive. When iTunes sees the CD, choose Select All from the Edit Menu. Then go to the File>Get Info. From here you can in essence re-label the info on the CD as iTunes sees it. What I do is add a number at the end of the title to represent the CD number. For example, the book Da Vinci Code I would relabel Da Vince Code 1, and then Da Vinci Code 2, etc. as the Album name. After importing all of the CD's tracks with their changed Album names, I go to the New Playlist for the book, sort by Album and them by Track. Update your iPod after this and they should play in the correct order. I hope this helps.

can you supply us with a link to MediaJoiner (freeware)? I did a google search for it and all i got was a virus from a site that had the MediaJoiner in it.

Sorry, the correct name is MediaJoin 2.0 by MystikMedia ( http://www.mystikmedia.com)
. I got the app here: http://www.mymusictools.com/audioconverters_4/mediajoin22337.htm

There are other tools available at my music tools and I do plan to try some of them just to see if there is a better interface. The one thing I don't like about MediaJoin is that you can't resize it's window to see the full file name. If you try something else and like how it works please post back.

Some of the programs will split files too which I sometimes need to do if I miss the fact that there is 60 seconds of silence at the end of a track for example. Usually I have to re-rip but if I could just cut the track that would be easier.

I may be way off-beam here, but bear with me...

Before you import the CD into iTunes, select all the tracks and do Advanced>Join Tracks - This will make iTunes import the whole CD as one large track.

Next, once the track is imported, select the track and do Ctrl/Cmd-I to get Info, and under Advanced (IIRC, if not, it's in one of those panes) there is an option to resume playback from where you left it. Select this and you should be able to play the audio book, pause it, listen to something else and come back to where you left off.

I don't recall when this option was added to iTunes, I only spotted it the other day (v6)

Vince

Note: The option I'm talking about is under the 'Options' Tab of the info Window - "Remember Playback Position"

I guess what i(we?) are trying to do is. get Our audio books in to the audio books file. in general we are trying to keep our Ipod clean. Keep it from looking cluttered up. For instance. I have harry potter and the half blood prince on my Ipod. At first it was as mp3. then it mixes in with other songs.And it about 2000 tracks. Then i found out to get it into the audio book file. Still there is about 2000 tracks. a little confusing. expecly when you try to charge your Ipod. sure it remembers where you you are in a track. But it can't remember what track you are on. so now I found out to rip a cd in to a disk at once. but by the time i got done, it 17 tracks (files) long. still difficult to keep track of. but if i can join the disks in to, Say four large files then it would be easier to keep track of what file you where on. Sorry for this thread to go on and on but i thought some of us could use some clarification

I like these comments on here, and have been trying to find this very particular thread. Thanks. However, I have already downloaded most of my audiobooks into iTunes, individual CD's, and individual tracks (i.e. ~17 tracks per disc).

1) Should I (and how would I) convert all those mp3's into 1 big file per disc (i.e. - 6 big files for a 6 disc book)?

2) And once and for all, how EXACTLY do I change it from mp3 -> aac -> m4a -> m4b (or however that goes)????? Thanks.

-Dan

Dan,

I'm not really in a position to answer Q1, Essentially you would re-rip from CD, remembering to select all the tracks on the CD and use Advanced>Join Tracks before you import. There may well be a method of joining tracks after the fact (in fact there most certainly is if you use a third party application), but I'm not certain if it can be done with iTunes

Answer to Q2:

In the advanced Menu you will have the option to "Convert to MP3" or "Convert to AAC" (depends on whether you've changed your import settings)

This option uses the same settings as your import from CD settings, so to change it, you need to go into Edit>Preferences>Import (up to iTunes 4) or Edit>Preferences>Advanced>Import (iTunes 5 and up).

Here you can set the import format and its settings (bit rate, sample rate etc.) Whatever you set here will be reflected in the Advanced>Convert to.." menu item.

You can even use it to convert from one kind of Mp3 to another, so if you had a Stereo 160kbps file that you wanted converted to a Mono 80kbps (to reduce file-size, and for audio books you may find mono and lower bit rates acceptable (try a few test encodes and see what they sound like at differen bit-rates), then set up the import settings using the "Custom" Setting option (just remember to set it back when you next want to do music!) - Remember though that converting from a low bit rate to a higher one won't improve the quality, just increase the file size (once the data is lost it's lost).

Converting to another format in this way creates a duplicate file in your library, so if you're completely happy with your lower quality, lower bit rate file then you can delete the original, or if you don't mind using the space on your HD but want to keep the high quality file off your iPod, then simply deselect it with the small blue checkbox next to its name in the library window - now it will not be used for playbac or transfer to your iPod.

For Audiobooks you may also want to use the Options tab in the Info window to set "Remember Playback Position" so it doesn't keep returning to the beginning of the file each time, and "Skip When Shuffling" so you don't get your audio books when you're listening to music on shuffle play.

There is a way of converting to a higher quality file, while getting the benefit of the higher bit rate and that is to re-import from the original CD. When you do this, iTunes will detect that you already have the file in your library and will ask if you want to replace the original file. If you say yes, then iTunes will overwrite the original with the new format but keep your last played/rating/play count etc. info for the track.

Sorry it's quite a long-winded answer, but iTunes has hidden depths, and by George, they're well hidden , but they are also very deep!

Vince

I can't take credit for this one. I found this another thread, in a another discussion. it should help getting you convert to a "audio book format"
http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=33491