"unauthorized media"

Just installed the promised and supposedly iba-file handling version of Pages.

Ah, yes. Pages becoming able to import old iBooks iba-files. Too good to be true?

Tested with a file of my travel to Brussels in july 2019. Nothing too complicated. A few videos. Some images. Custom font. Has worked and been used, seen and read by many the last year or so. Compared to some of my really demanding iBooks rather trivial.

Same MacBook Pro 13 (four Thunderbolt 3) bought early 2019. Same hardware used producing my three most recent iBooks from 2019. Including this iba-file.

First attempt. Pages showed its face. Then disappeared. Nothing further. No error messages. No indication of reason behind “sudden death”. Ehhh...?!?!

Tried again several minutes later. Pages shows itself, and vanishes again. Start looking for a reason in log files, then - suddenly - an Apple error report showed up on screen. Sent with an appropriately “significant comment” (just eliminating any chance of misunderstanding my mood ;-). Ahem!

Conclusion: Apple marketing drivel, as expected.

Sigh.

I seem to have made a wise decision in leaving the Apple “bit rot” (soft-, firm- and hardware) for good. It will at least calm my nerves and steady my mood in the coming days, months and probably years. I’m not in the mood to ARM wrestle with Apple (my Intel says, that... ahem... and it may well take years too ;-)

Regards and a wry smile

Sorry to hear that Kurt, it worked for me, not on first try though.

After updating Pages yesterday I tried importing an .iba file and nothing happened. Turns out I had to update Pages once more to get version 10.1, I don't know why the latest version didn't download the first time.

After I dowloaded 10.1 everything worked. All the .iba pages with "missing"/"unauthorised" media opened correctly in Pages, with the sound files and videos (that had been missing in iBooksAuthor) at the same exact places. Nothing was removed or misplaced from the original .iba files before that media bug.

Pages asks you to save them again though, in a different format. Tried to export it as an ePub and displayed perfectly on my iPad, sounds and videos playing correctly too. So there's that.

What is missing is the "book" features, such as an index, table of contents, the ability to (easily) jump from one section of the book to the other, as the file is displayed page after page, and if you pinch to zoom out you'll just get a gallery of the pages (as in Photos on an iPhone). But this is an aspect I have not really looked at while exporting so I might have missed a few steps. Swiping through the document is a little more tedious.

I’ve just used the iBooks author import update and while it seems to import reasonably well, there a few small issues. I’ve noticed firstly in my iBook file you could click smaller pictures and have them go fullscreen, that seems to not be there, also there is no preview link to view your book as it would appear while you working on it and you can only weblink text and not images, so actually quite major issues.

I have now tried importing three iBook iba-files into Pages 10.1 (released late yesterday evening in Europe). 

Two out of the three different iba-files just crashes the Pages application without any message or reason given. Just a complete and thorough crash of the worst kind (seen from an old system programmers viewpoint when reading the report). My take: Code quality was probably not of utmost priority and importance compared to release date.

All iBooks based on the same, customized template.

All iBooks have lots of images (from full page to tiny, overlapping or not).

All iBooks use pages of varied design (no text, small text amounts, one or two column text etc.).

All iBooks use the same “free” Noto fonts (released by Google).

All iBooks have embedded videos - from one to many, from small and short to large and longish.

All iBooks are in use without hiccups - only the latest of the Catalina horror releases has needlessly introduced the “unauthorized media” error message into iBooks Author.

Observations (sizes rounded to nearest megabyte):

Travelogue from Hamburg January 2019.

One video, lots of images.

iba file size: 135 megabyte

ibook file size: 58 megabyte

Crashing without error message before completing import.

Impossible to know the cause and remedy any problem.

Travelogue from Rome April 2019.

Many videos, lots of images.

iba file size: 269 megabyte

ibook file size: 174 megabyte

Import succeeds. Front page missing, as well as a few goodies. Formatting dramatically altered by “text overflow page” (from a few lines to half a column of text) in most sections/chapters etc. due to not respecting exact line heights (in order to secure horizontal alignment across columns when different styles and fonts are in use, such as for headers, common text, citations etc.).

Some intricate positioning has been kept (exact positioned auto starting videos on full page images, aligning the starting/ending frame of the video with the background - in effect hiding the boundary before/after play). Others have “moved” inexplicably. Some videos have gotten their frames ‘locked” (wasn’t the case originally), others not. Maybe reaction on memory garbage causing crashes in the other two example reads).

Lots of bits and pieces not quite delivered in the same fashion - and especially display, handling and further editing in Pages leaves a lot to be desired, compared to using ibooks author.

Travelogue from Brussels July 2019.

Many videos, lots of images.

iba file size: 284 megabyte

ibook file size: 162 megabyte

Crashing without error message before completing import.

Impossible to know the cause and remedy any problem.

General comment: Files relatively small and mildly complicated to trivial in basic design and layout.

Conclusion: Not a decent release. Not a true replacement for iBooks Author in anything but trivial cases, but not even reliable for reading iba-versions of very trivial iBooks without thoroughly crashing completely! Not even reaching the level of “acceptable” for Alpha or (pre-)Betha-candidate releases. As an iba Import solution replacing iBooks Author the released Pages 10.1 stinks. Plain and simple.

I’m not even sure, what to do next for my around hundred current iBooks to save them for future use, but it starts to look as unnecessary hard work to me. Import into Pages is no solution, at all!

Additional comments:

I have now tried to import 12 very different iba-files. Three import attempts succeeded (25% is not what I would call usable). The largest, 750+ megabytes, actually succeeded. It was from 2013. The most recent from 2019. There is no obvious reason behind the crashes during import. Not even a hint!

The few iba-files, that actually survived to be saved as Pages files, had systemic errors built into the result. The same goes for the saved epub(3) files - after a thorough clean-up of the imported files. That gave me time to find a good Android reader, that could read all my fixed layout files. Purrrrr...fect!

There are basic, fundamental and really unforgivable “deviations” from the original iba-content to the pages-version. It’s as if the programmer (I doubt you need two to produce this disaster) has never worked with ePub or even produced any iBooks in his/her life. The errors introduced clearly indicates, that the programmer has no practical knowledge of the matter (if (s)he does, the result could be characterized as unforgivable ;-)

I think, I actually experienced the same kind of (non)quality in the early nineties, but never imagined that it would turn up again this day and time in a “standard” products. Not even for Apple, although the iOS/iPad 13 and macOS 10.15 Catalina debacles indicate a deep seated, fundamental problem in Apple development in my opinion.

Fighting programming bugs is like fighting COVID-19 - it doesn’t help one bit to lie, deny and/or ignore the effects. Just my two bits on this horror!

Problem solved:

I’ve found a practical and very simple way to convert all my iBooks to valid ePub3 versions with only minimal Sigil work on my Windows 10 platform; also works on all the files, that dramatically crashes Pages. A big plus in my eyes ;-) Obviously neither Pages nor iBooks Author are involved. That’s especially important for my future ebooks productivity.

Have fun with Pages. My problem is solved.

FYI By following the method described on April 27th (post above), you can see the result published a few days ago in Apple Books Store including 40 videos (downloadable for free)

Same problem here,

come on guys we need a fix for this

Same issue for all my books with Catalina. Terrific! And no way to change somewhere the 'copy protected' setting of any video.

Hope a fix will come soon :-(

Despite the warnings, I was able to export the book and upload an update to the Books Store using iTunes Producer.

I did check and they are working fine. The movies in this book are screen captures and have no sound, though.

Not fixed with 10.15.1. No news from support, incredible!

Had to go back to Mojave - not good at all 😳

Any solutions yet??? Exactly the same problem homevideo's that are protected.

No, still see it on 10.15.2...