iOS5 combines chapters in audiobooks (automatic and unwanted)

dieterfi wrote:

Yes, have have M4B build with AudioBook Builder and i have check it on iOS 6 GM. This bug is NOT fixed. Fixed are only the individual chapternames.

Check the images 4.2.1 vs. 5.0.1 at the beginning on this thread!

If you have chapters with identical names this will be joined to one chapter.

Example 1 (Looks like in 4.2.1 AND iTunes):

A Dance with Dragons

- Prologue 2:30

- Prologue 1:30

- Prologue 2:00

- Tyrion 3:50

- Tyrion 2:10

- Tyrion 3:00

- Daenerys 2:10

- Daenerys 3:20

- Daenerys 1:30

- Daenerys 2:00

I saw your post to another thread. But what we were speaking about that iTunes no longer shows smaller than book parts. It no longer shows the recordng segments.

If the segments were name uniquely, maybe Music.app would not combine them. If they were named like:

01-01 Prologue

01-02 Prologue

01-03 Prologue

02-01 Tyrion,

they might not get combined.

Yes, it will be a pain to have to rename each recording segment, but they are not chapters. I hate it when publishers make those tiny segments of 4 or 5 minutes, instead of longer recording segments, 15 minutes to about an hour.

I have only used Audiobook Maker once, a few years back, but it was a pain.

I do import audiobooks from disc, using iTunes, with the import set to AAC encoder and it make .m4a audio files. It uses the recording segment sizes that the publisher created. Unfortunately, many publishers like those tiny recording segments, and really mangle the segment names so that if you were to put them all in one flat folder, they would not play in proper order. But if you put them into separate folders by book parts, you can get them to play in proper order.

You are correct. Segment lenghts are just my preference and not the problem. I think some of the problem is how the audio publisher is recording and encoding the audiobooks and maybe how Audiobook Maker is converting the books.

I don't really like the way the word chapter is used here, because in the shorter recording segments, it is less than a chapter, often no more than a few sentences and not a whole chapter, as shown by your example of 3 segments making up the chapter called Prologue, 3 for Tyrionm and 4 for Daenerys. In the longer recording segments, it is sometimes longer than 1 or 2 book chapters.

Before iOS 7 I had no problem getting the longer segments to display and the scrub bar would control one of those longer segments at a time. Say 15 minutes to just over an hour, a workable lenght of time to control with the 1.25 inch (32 mm) of the scrub bar.

The reason I suggest that the pre-iOS 7 problem might be with Audiobook Maker is that the books I have gotten from Audible.com, or from the public library with Overdrive Media Console, or with CDs imported with iTunes, did not have problems with recording segments. Expect those caused by the way the publishers named the segments or the way they coded them to group after an import. They would show the segment times and each would be displayed and scrubbed with the scrub bar.

Since iOS 7, Music.app, for me would not display smaller than book parts. In other words, either the whole contents of a CD or download part of a book. In iOS 7.0 to 7.0.2, I had the added problem that trying to sync DRM-restricted audiobooks would cause the syncs to fail. I am discussing properly obtained DRM-restricted audiobooks. iOS 7.0.3, resolved the syncing issue for me, but apparently did not help other issues, others are having with syncing. It has not resolved the issue of playing one recording segment at a time, instead of one whole book part at a time.

I think that few users are having the issues you are having, and the low response your threads are getting, is that few are using Audiobook Maker, and that the problem lies there. It could also possibly be how the publishers of the books you get are encoding those books, is making the issue worse. Apple has no control over how the publisher encode their books.

I was going to suggest you contact the developer of Audiobook Maker, but see it is open source and it's purpose is to join and convert .mp3 files. At that point I would suggest moving away from Audiobook Maker and letting iTunes do the conversion. The problem is not with iOS, but what you are using to convert your books.

Brent

I am mistaken, I used Audiobook BUILDER, and Splasm is the developer. I only have v 1.5.3 and see no reference to being able to make a .m4p file. You responded to Tyler's comment about the .m4b, so I assumed that was the format you were having problems with. I was not impressed with v 1.5.3 and it has not been updated since 2011.

Apple may have called it chapter, but I still find most are confused by that name, and we can choose to use a better description.

I had not heard of a .m4p before so I looked it up and found, "A file with the M4P file extension is an iTunes Audio file." So I hope that iTunes would show them. And if you are making .m4p files, iTunes will do the job, only it will not combine the smaller segments to chapter size segments.

I agree, I have seen 300 or more recording segments, of less than 3 minutes, for a 8 to 10 hour book, and that is a lot of segments to deal with, especially if they sync to an iDevice as individual items, rather than something resembling a book chapter or CD size segment of a book. But the computers are the ones dealing with the segments.

And I agree that before iOS 7, these smaller portions were handled better.

But I still think some of your issues before iOS 7 and now, are caused by how the books were encoded by Audiobook BUILDER and the publisher. Assuming you are talking about commercially published books.

I have a library of about 700 books, with only one converted by Audiobook BUILDER, that I can think of. All of my books have shown their segments fine until iOS 7. Only since installing iOS 7 have the segments not shown. So I think your issues before iOS 7 are related to Audiobook BUILDER.

Your English is much better than my total lack of Dutch, so I am hesitant to point out that the Dutch "titels", is "titles" in English.

But our discssion here is reminding me of the quote, "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." by Albert Einstein. I have no solution for you. I have only tried to point out another possible reason for your proble here. I doubt I will continue with this discussion.

Have you found another app that will work any better or are you still fighting the native Music.app?

The reason this guy has NO points,

There could be many reasons he has no points, like he could have created a new user account because he can not access his old one.

He is stubborn in how he wants to approach the issue, and not look at it from another prospective, but so what. It is not always easy to explain a situation in a few lines and in another language.

I happen to notice you, ReallyHerobrine, also have no points. But that only relates to this forum. I have been a Apple enthusiast since 1998, active on other forums, yet I have only 80 points, so what!

What are you trying to contribute to the solution, ReallyHerobrine? I was trying to get dieterfi to look it from a different prospective.

Well great, I have been doing this for about 2 months now, but honestly, if he is not going to help and only defeat the purpose of what these threads are made for (helping people out with their apple technology) then he should leave. I am only 14, but i have the intelect, maturity, brains, and tollerence that it takes to actualy help people when they need it.

ReallyHerobrine, in case you didn't notice, dieterfi is the original creator of this thread.

So, if you had:

- intelect, you would have realized this. Someone who asks a quesiton is looking for help, not offering solutions. He has worked on this issue since 2011 and tolerated the bug for a pretty long time I would say.

- maturity, you wouldn't have bothered posting your "This is the reason this guy has NO points." comment. Points really don't mean much. There are plenty of readers in these forums who don't have an account and wouldn't bother voting a post as helpful if they did.

- brains, you would realize that you have basically repeated yourself and that you misspelled tolerance.

- tolerance, again, you wouldn't have posted the UNHELPFUL comment about dieterfi having no points and you would have made a useful contribution to the thread. You have not offered anybody any helpful information.

Now, having said that, stop your 14 year old trolling. Don't post unless you have something relavent to say to the conversation. That is for this thread and any other thread. I highly doubt you actually know anything about building audiobooks, file structure, or anything else that may help this topic, so just buzz off and stop burying the actual information here.

dieterfi, I don't know where your audiobooks come from but the audible app does have chapter markers in it:

Admitidly, I have NOT tried this app out extensively so I don't know the limitations myself and I doubt you can put your own personal audiobooks into the app but it might be a place to start with at least some of your books on any iOS 7 devices you are using.

Audible.app and Overdrive.app both work well and will show the chapter markers, but only work for books you download directly to the iDevice from their appropriate sites. In other words, if you have audiobook on CDs, or other downloadable web sites, you have no way to get them to the iDevice. But there are other apps that will work with books.

You have to buy books from Audible, and Overdrive works with US public libraries to allow downloadable book borrowing. Since dieterfi appears to be Dutch, I did not mention Overdrive before, and was guessing that since he is using Audiobook Builder, figure he was getting free books in .mp3 format.

Good suggestion, Tyler, but I don't think either will help dieterfi.