"unauthorized media"

10.15.2 may have a solution. I run Mojave so I can't check it out

Photos

• Resolves an issue that may cause some AVI and MP4 files to appear as unsupported
• Fixes an issue that prevents newly created folders from appearing in Albums view
• Addresses an issue where manually sorted images in an album may be printed or exported out of order
• Fixes an issue that prevents the zoom-to-crop tool from working in a print preview

I found out a trick to turn around the problem. For example: I wrote a book with text, screenshots, and a number of video. To update this book, as I open it, all videos front pics disappear, just the background remains. So :

• First, I update and/or modify all text and pictures stuff.
• Once complete, I drag and drop all videos one after the other, at the same place in pages where was those disappeared.
• I NEVER close the book until I have finish to place all videos (if I close and reopen, all videos disappear again!)
• I NEVER return back to previous pages of the book after videos in place (if I do that, all videos and thumnails in the left side banner disappear)
• Once all complete I use "Share" menu to create mybook.ibooks file to be published in iBookStore with new version number. (I don't use "Publish" function).
• Once done, I open the previous mybook.itmsp file in iTunes Producer, I update meta data fields as needed, update description, date and so on.
• I drag and drop mybook.ibooks file in the 3rd page (after pricing page)
• I send the stuff to Apple
• God! it works!

Hope it helps...

lgcebuk wrote:

Apple Support suggested I use Pages to make my next books since videos now give this error in iBooks Author. Unfortunately using Pages means you can’t use “pop over” widgets so, for example, interactive maps can’t be included in travel books. So it appears I either create my books with the buggy iBooks Author (no video) or Pages (no interactive maps). Six months after Catalina introduced this problem Apple have done absolutely nothing! So much for “it just works”.

It’s six months now since this new iBooks Author was first reported and four months since Apple engineers confirmed they could replicate it. So it is an acknowledged bug which appears to have been inadvertently introduced alongside Catalina. No problem with that because code is so complex unintentional bugs can always occur.

Part of our responsibility as reasonable users of Apple software is to report bugs and co-operate with Apple by sending logs, screenshots etc that they need to investigate.

Well in December 2019 I spent a few hours doing exactly that at a support agent’s request - screen sharing, following the steps support asked for and finally sending the logs they needed to look into it.

I was happy to do that believing I was taking part in a positive process to get the bug fixed so that we could all continue working on our multimedia books. I thought it was then reasonable to ask Apple to fix what they inadvertently broke so that I could use my Mac and iPhone to the full in book creation.

Four months after doing all that what is the result from Apple?

• No bug fix in the intervening four months;
• iBooks Support saying there is no news or timeline for a fix;
• Two polite, positive emails to Tim Cook asking for this to be looked at totally ignored - no reply or even an acknowledgement from his office / team;
• All work on book updates and new books stopped;
• Suggestion from Apple to use Pages but they admit it lacks the interactive features that made iBooks Author so good (e.g. pop over widget).

(One helpful poster on here suggests a workaround but it complicates the workflow)

Maybe this is because Apple think this is a bug affecting a minority. So if you have had this problem please contact Apple Support directly to inform them it affects you too. Apple have told me they don’t monitor these community forums so they won’t know how much of a problem it is from this community.

Regrettably I find Mr Cook’s office totally ignoring a loyal, genuine, courteous email (twice!) just plain discourteous. I guess I just have to accept that’s the way Apple treats its customers now.

So please, if you have this problem don’t rely on this community - inform Apple Support directly in the hope they take content creators more seriously.

It would be nice if Apple, when it knows something is broken in its software suite, makes sure it “just works’ again in a timely manner.

With the media error message problems with Catalina / iBooks Author I decided to go ahead and try Apple's new preferred book creation method, Pages. I have produced 11 media rich books with IBA in the past and never had any problems. I'm posting this in case others decide to make the move to alert others to possible problems.

First, although Pages lacks some IBA features, it was easy to produce the Pages-based book. It's a shame I can't make maps interactive any more but I ended up producing book number 12. This is where it got frustrating and confusing.

1. Publishing the Pages book I got a message that it was too big at 1.45GB. It seems that while the maximum file size with IBA was 2GB, now with Pages it's 1GB. IBA had never given me any problems with file size and my readers reported no size issues either.
2. So, rather than discard a third of my book, I used Pages "reduce file size" option and the window told me it would reduce to 750 Mb - enough to go under the 1GB new limit. I did this with a copy of the book so as not to lose the original and it only reduced it to 1.25GB - still too big for Pages to publish. The discrepancy between the estimated reduced size and the actual reduced size was unfortunate.
3. Then I made an Epub version of the book (which I had never had to do with IBA) and got it under 1GB. Previewing this there was a definite decrease in video quality in the book compared to my previous IBA books.
4. Trying to publish the Epub took me round in circles for a while until I got to iTunes Producer....... which told me the book (now about 860 Mb) was too big and there was a limit of 2GB!!!
5. Given that my file size was as small as it was going to get and under the error message limit I pressed to continue anyway and now am waiting to see if the book is accepted and works.

The final annoyance was that I got told the book cover I attached had the wrong number of pixels on the vertical side. OK I can fix that but in IBA it was just an incorporated part of the book writing. There is an option to use the first page of the book as a cover in publishing via Pages but no preview option so you have no idea what you are choosing as a cover.

I will stick with Pages as there will soon be no alternative but the following issues have been reported to Apple as needing attention if Pages is to work as smoothly as IBA did before Catalina and allow quality, media rich books to be produced: conflicting messages about maximum permitted size / wildly inaccurate file reduction estimates / degrading of video quality / lack of control over book covers.

I think it's fair to say Apple have a way to go on this replacement of IBA!

I have a similar problem with looots of multimedia fixed size ibooks produced since 2013 (never for public use).

Nothing has changed on my side, except now on Catalina EVERYTHING displays the same error messages, when I open the hitherto problem free “iba” files.

“NARJS, innit?”

Not good. Especially since we only have a vague promise from Apple, that “some kind” of converter will be available for conversion to Pages. I certainly hope, that will involve conversion to a “real epub3 valid” format, which the current iBooks format is certainly not.

Currently I’m moving everything out of Apple’s “fangs”.

First step: All my “.iba” files are moved to my NAS and my Windows platform. Whatever happens now is out of Apples domain. Add the extension “.zip” to the file(s), you wan’t to inspect the content, and go on from there.

Second step: Create a more ePub like representation. This involves iCloud (and putting your I iBooks into the books viewer). I have a “backup script”, that copies all content from:

/Users/<username>/Library/Mobile Documents/

to my NAS. My special interest is in the folder:

iCloud~com~apple~iBooks

where all my iBooks content is located. And that is far nearer to any valid ePub format, than anything else. Here’s a view into one of my Ibooks as seen on my NAS:

Looking into OPS gets you this:

Ahhh... now we’re getting somewhere. And a peek into assets, gives me:

You continue on your own, but it is absolutely vital, that you get this information out of the Apple environment NOW! Nobody knows, where it is placed or if it will at all be accessible that easy and especially that “organized” in the future.

Copy to your NAS, your Google Drive or OneNote or... an external disk or USB stick formatted in ExFAT (can be read anywhere else). Place it somewhere safe for later use, if Apple’s Converter offer does not pan out to be usable in real life for your purpose. It doesn’t hurt to have a copy of your iba files either, but they’re probably not that interesting in the long run. Their content is a plain mess in my eyes. But you never know, what the future brings, so... backup, what you have now!

From here, I‘m starting to “hand-convert” a few iBooks to Sigil. Discovering if that’s a viable option. If, I’ll try to optimize the conversion with a few scripts or a simple program running in Windows 10. Will NOT be released to the public in any form (life is too short to support some of the oafs feeling entitled to reserve hours, days or weeks if not months of your spare time - for free, of course ;-)

Did I say, that I’m moving out of the Apple sphere?

The iOS/iPadOS 13 and the Catalina debacles were the initiators; the extremely short notice concerning the iBooks Author, and still no Converter combined with the WWDC announcements concerning the migration to ARM made my decision firm.

I‘ve moved most of my projects to Windows 10 Pro machinery (the last machine starting this month), and for my purpose and use cases the pain looks to be relatively limited. What better to do, after a lockdown, over summer, preparing for being up to snuff again in a few months.

Pages may evolve to be a reasonable platform for many, but even if - my trust in Apple supporting their tools - and giving ample notice BEFORE termination - has vanished.

YMMV, but... the only reason I entered the Apple sphere in the first place in late 2012 was the introduction of the iBooks Author. What is more fitting, that I also follow the iBooks Author demise from the platform?

HerrieC wrote:

I try to be optimistic, interested in the possibilities of Pages. So I experimented a little with Pages, created a first book with a gallery and a short movie in it and exported the file. It shows up in Books on the Mac all right, but guess what: the problem with the cover of the book synced on iPad is still there! Again this generic ugly cover, and not my artwork.

So I'll have to use the workaround that was developed in the dedicated cover thread (Cover page cannot be displayed). I am worrying about the future of Books on iPad and the 25 books I created with Author.

The only new version, I've had access to, is the 10.1 version I got late yesterday evening.

And it crashes on one of my most recent and simplest iBooks. As shown here, from this morning:

It dies. Whether I select reading via Pages (right mouse click) or from inside Pages. But only in the latter case, I get to see a progress bar (first seen today). It dies after reading roughly a quarter of the iba document or less (according to the progress bar).

Not really a usable replacement for the Author application, is it?

Ah... yes... maybe Apple forgot to make a thorough and well planned test of the added code to support iba-files. You know, the same quality, demonstrated at the release of iOS 13 - ahem - and macOS Catalina (scream)! Alas... what does a hardware company know about software ("it just works" has gotten a whole new connotation recently inside the Apple sphere, ehhh ;-)

I have exactly the same problem. Upgraded to Catalina and now all multimedia files (video and audio) appear as blank placeholders in my books. Some of them are DRM-protected (but never caused this before) but others were entirely created by myself.

Downgrading back to Mojave seems a bit extreme but I hope it's not the only option.

Same problem here.

All the .iba file I open give me this error message, regardless if the files are really protected or not. When I replace the audio/video files seems like it's working, but when I reopen the book I got the same message again.

Did you check the exported book?

Because even though you can export, the video/audio widgets appear differently than they should (videos are blank space, audio changed icon in my case, so I didn't want to risk and upload to the store like this)

Hi guys, I confirm: I have exported a User Guide including 40 videos. Actually the issue seems to be only the lack of display in the movie embedded window that remain blank, but a tap on play button launch the video as expected. Anyway it is a disturbing bug for users.

No solutions, but some progress with understanding the cause of the problem. It seems that this problem only occurs with video files. I have tried to insert several video files that I created as mov and mp4 files. IBook author ""optimizes" the file and turns it internally into an MP4 which is then "unauthorized'. When you preview the iBook, the video is there, but all you see is the widget and the "play" button. When you click the button, the video plays.

This seems to be a Catalina problem. Apple needs to deal with this and probably do an update of iBook Author. Do the Apple developers know about this?

For me the solution at this moment is. I transfer the iba file to my old computer without Catalina. I open it up in iBook Author.

Next I export the version in my old computer. Next step put it on the new computer again and share it right away without open it again. Everything then is like it should be on my ipad. Off course this is not like we would like to have it. I did also report it to the IBook Author team so they should no but maybe we all have to report this matter.

Here is a temporary fix, until Apple fixes iBooks Author.

Put the video into a new Keynote presentation. Save the file.

Instead of using the media (video) widget, insert the Keynote file into the Keynote Widget.

This worked for me.

As of 2/25/2020, I'm still having this same issue. I save my own videos in '.iba' file and at the time the media works fine but once I save it and then re-open to file to work on it I get the 'unauthorized media' warning and all media in my file is blank and needs to be re-inserted. Any update on a fix?

Yes Apple know about this. I reported it and they asked me to send files back inDecember 2019. They then said they had replicated it and accepted it was a Catalina bug. Unfortunately no progress or update from Apple so I am totally blocked creating my ebooks.