How to uncombine audiobook folders?

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Level 1

8 points

How to uncombine audiobook folders?

I have iTunes 12.1.0 installed and this had been working just fine, but I purchase books on CD and then burn them as MP3 files. Each CD is a folder. In the past when I imported the folders into iTunes it would import the 12 "CDs" as 12 separate folders as I want them to be. Of course because they are MP3 files they go into Music and I go into Get Info and then the Option page and change the "Music" to "Audiobook" and they are moved to their proper place. Then I can highlight them and add them to my iPod to listen to while driving. That worked fine. This evening when I imported the 13 folders iTunes for some reason combined all the files into one folder, which has never been done before, and now instead of being listed as disk 1, track 1, 2, 3, etc. it now lists them as disk 1, track 1, disk 2, track 1, disk 3, track 1 and so on. I want it back to the way it was, what changed?

BTW while I am typing this I am downloading 12.1.1 so I hope that fixes things, because it got broke in the last week or so some how.

Any help appreciated. Thanks

Windows PC-OTHER, Windows 7

Posted on Feb 23, 2015 6:37 PM

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Answer 1

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,617 points

Feb 23, 2015 9:30 PM in response to GrumpySC

When you set the media kind to Audiobook iTunes doesn't really recognize that there's a subdivision into "albums" - the standard folder structure under iTunes\iTunes Media\Audiobooks is to have one folder per author, with all audiobook files associated with that author stored in it. I don't believe that there's been any changes in this behavior in recent versions of Windows. If you need to preserve a folder structure based on the CDs you've imported from you should leave the media kind as Music - you can always set the genre to "Audiobook" and create a (smart) playlist so that these are collected together.

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Answer 2

GrumpySC Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 24, 2015 4:44 AM in response to hhgttg27

Maybe my terms are incorrect then. I know if import a book that has been ripped from CD then iTunes usually keeps the files separated into their separate "groupings". The files for Disk 1 is together, then Disk 2 and so on. This time it combined them so that all the tracks from each disk are together. For instance as I said you play all the track 1 for every disk, then track 2 and so on. Heck of a way to try to figure out what is going on in the book. I have tried to put more than one book by the same author on my iPod and it combines them like that, so I am forced to install only one book per author and I think that stinks too. Especially if there is a series of books and you want to listen to them back to back.

This book is part of a series and I had the previous book imported but had deleted the book out of iTunes. I imported it again and it is broke out separately. So I deleted it again and tried the book that follows this one and it imported properly too. Only this one seems to be the pain and not sure what is different about it.

Thanks

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Answer 3

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,617 points

Feb 24, 2015 5:34 AM in response to GrumpySC

Got (I think!). When you import each CD, make sure that each has either:

a different value in the Album field
a common Album value and different values for Disk Number

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Answer 4

turingtest2

Level 10

279,237 points

Feb 24, 2015 5:51 AM in response to GrumpySC

See Audiobooks on iPods. On Apple devices audiobooks are organized by name. Works OK for single track audiobooks but can be confusing otherwise. Fix using playlists, or my scripts, or convert to a single file audiobook.

tt2

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Answer 5

GrumpySC Author

Level 1

8 points

Feb 25, 2015 5:19 AM in response to hhgttg27

When I rip CDs if the book is part of a series and I know which book I put that first, then the title of the book, followed by the disk number. That way I can keep them separated. So I knew what you said to do I had already done, but last night I decided to see if I could figure out what was going on so I opened Windows Explorer and picked one of the folders for a disk and noticed that only the title was there. I looked at other folders for other books and they had the correct title, but none of them did for this book. NO clue what changed them so went into Windows Media Player and noticed there that even the title of the book was different from what I had named it. So I blew the book away and re-ripped it and that fixed the problem.

About halfway through ripping the book I realized that I probably could have used the Ctrl key and selected the tracks for each disk and changed the title for those tracks and then finally the name of the book would have been faster, but as I said I was already halfway through and I had already blown the old folders away.

Anyway imported it into iTunes and it did what I was looking for and I got that on my iPod now. Thanks

Now if I could just import multiple books by the same author onto my iPod and it not combine on the iPod them I would be a happy camper.

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Answer 6

hhgttg27

Level 5

5,617 points

Feb 25, 2015 6:07 AM in response to GrumpySC

It is unfortunate that iPods don't handle audiobooks consistently - older models typically don't handle multi-file audiobooks at all well. My older nanos (2nd & 3rd generations) list each file as a separate audiobook even though they are properly grouped in iTunes and in my 7th gen nano. I assume that the original functionality assumed one file = one book and Apple have never felt it worthwhile (even if possible) to update the firmware on the older models to fix this.

A couple of things you might want to look at:

for audiobooks on CD that have a very large number of tracks - which would normally result in an equally large number of files in iTunes - it may be worth using the Join Tracks function within CD importing to bring each disc in as one file (or group the tracks into a smaller number of files)
there's a nice utility called Chapter and Versethat can take audiobooks split into multiple mp3 or m4a files and convert them into iTunes' audiobook format (m4b) complete with chapter divisions

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