Level 1

18 points

IOS 8.4 Has Ruined my Audiobooks & Audio Drama Library

I'll try to keep to the point here, you don't want my life story, but perhaps my listening habits and content will help to explain my issue.

So far, I seem to be part of the minority, hopefully more people will speak up about this.

I've never had any issues with the audiobooks section in the iTunes library or on any of my iPhone's or iPods. Now, having just installed IOS 8.4 on my iPhone, Apple seem to have left me out in the cold - with no way back.

I have no issue with migrating Audiobooks from the music app to the books app, it seems to work OK, that is for a single audiobook with a single title.

The trouble is, that more than half of my huge Audiobook library consists of Full Cast, Episodic Audio Drama Series', that is - a series of stories with its own title and own artwork contained within an all encompassing Series Title. Now that's been blown to bits, I have no idea which story I'm listening to. I have spent years, months, weeks and hours carefully organising my audiobook library. Each story title within a series (or album if you like) has been replaced with the generic title "Chapter X", not only that, it's using the same artwork for each story. 😟

I Was perfectly happy classifying my full cast audio drama/comedy/thriller/horror/sci-fi as "Audiobook" before, with all the benefits it allowed. What am I supposed to do now?

My carefully curated audio drama series' are now not one thing or another as far as iTunes is concerned. They're not music, not books, not audiobooks, not film or TV.

What was the point of changing this? I don't really care, my audiobooks were happy and I was happy with the way things were, it worked fine. Yes it now has a sleep timer - so what? The iPhone & iPad already have that built into the pull-up menu.

So now it seems that I'll have to re-categorise all of my audio dramas as "Music"! Is that really the only thing I can do?

Did Apple not think about this issue before building this update? Do Apple consider several or many different ideas before they go ahead with things like this, or is everything decided and implemented with just one, final, narrow point of view? This seems like a step backwards, not an improvement.

Most importantly, are Apple going to address this issue and fix it?

How about giving us, the consumers more choice and flexibility?

What this update has done is to make my audio library on my iPhone resemble the absolute shambles that my friend with an Android phone has to struggle with on a daily basis.

iPhone 5s, iOS 8.4, null

Posted on Jul 6, 2015 1:35 AM

92 replies

Aug 19, 2015 10:49 PM in response to Hackmodford

Normally I don't approve of self-promotion in a forum like this but I was desperate enough to give this a try even at £2.29

It's a nice clean app and I will give it a long test over my my now go-to "Audiobooks and podcast player" by Contity consulting. However, I can instantly see that it is not a great improvement over the Contity app. Yes, it will show chapter titles in a single file but if you have multiple stories grouped under an umbrella title then yes you can see the individual stories under that group but still don't have access the chapters embedded in those stories. It's a shame as I listen to exactly the titles shown on the designers website 🙂

I have not tried it long enough to know how it handles those "awkward" files that jump around, even though they were playing fine under iOS 8.3, or those with multiple artwork created by Audiobook Maker.

I'll report back when I have have given it a good long test.

Aug 20, 2015 2:59 AM in response to swampsnake

Embedded chapters should work even if stories are grouped under umbrella titles. As for embedded chapter artwork, that is a planned feature.

If you're having issues, can you please email me? Support@undulib.com

As far as I'm aware the only time chapters do not work is if the file has DRM. An audible book is one such example.

Gedders Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 20, 2015 7:32 AM in response to Hackmodford

It was me that started this topic.

I've just had a look at your app. What a coincidence, because the majority of my non-music audio is audio drama, specifically DW BF titles - virtually all of them, from every range.

Three quarters of my dramas are ripped directly from the CD and the rest are the download files, that you get when you buy a disc from the BF site.

To elaborate on my original post, which was more awkwardly written.

I have all the DW BF ranges. Aside from the monthly range, most of the other ranges have 'seasons' - whereas my monthly range is organised in iTunes as a single album/book with 202 'tracks', that is: 202 individual 2-hour stories with their own title/chapter name and their own artwork, all under the same general title/album name.

My other ranges tend to have seasons, in this case I've organised them in the same way, only substituting season numbers with disc numbers.

My only requirements are:

That each story within the range of dramas retains the range title, that I can check multiple individual stories from each range and sync them to my iPhone, each story must playback on my iPhone, showing both its unique artwork and unique story title - as well as remembering playback position. That's all.

I've had a look at your app and it looks promising. Will it do all the things I want it to do, as listed above?

A big incentive to buy this app would be a free trial period, even if it was for only 3 days or a week. If I could audition the app first and found that it was flexible enough for my needs, then I'd be more than happy to pay for it. Why no trial period? A trial period could only benefit both the app developer and potential customers.

At the moment, any audio player that won't show me individual chapter titles and chapter artwork is a deal breaker for me.

This wouldn't be an issue at all, if only Apple would acknowledge the existence of Full-Cast Radio Plays, that all have their own unique titles and artworks within the same overall season title.

I Just want the choice and freedom to organise and handle my own files in exactly the way I want to organise and use them.

Who was it bothering before, when audiobooks had their own little sub-category within the music app under 'more'? If people didn't use audiobooks, they could just ignore that section. It worked fine as it was.

Aug 20, 2015 7:51 AM in response to Gedders

Here's what will happen in Undulib.

The "albums" will appear in the main list view. So for example let's say you have "Season 1" as an album title. You might see something like:

-----------------------------

Season 1 \

14 items /

-----------------------------

When you tap "Season 1" it will take you to a sub list that might look like this

-----------------------------

Drama Title 1

3:25 Remaining

-----------------------------

Drama Title 2

-----------------------------

Drama Title 3

-----------------------------

If you were to tap "Drama Title 1" it would take you to the player where "Drama Title 1" will appear at the top with a sub label underneath that shows what chapter you're currently on. (Note: it will not say, "Season 1", because that is the album name, not the title.) It will show the unique artwork for each drama even if it is in an album.

-----------------------------------------------

Drama Title 1

Chapter 1 - A Cool Name

-----------------------------------------------

Undulib will even obey the "sort albums" metadata setup in iTunes.

It will remember the playback position because technically it's using the stock music player to play files behind the scenes. This means that this information can even be synced between devices with iTunes!

As for a trial period... I'd love to do one, but it's against the Appstore rules 😟

Basically, Undulib works like the Music app did pre iOS 8.4, but I've gone one step farther and

1) provided a way to seperate audiodrama from audiobooks (just add #audiodrama to the comments of any file, if it's an album, you only have to do it for the first one in the list that will be synced)

2) provided a better way to see/browse embedded chapters (embedded chapter artwork support is on the way too)

I know what you mean about organizing files. My iTunes library is setup very similar to yours, with albums containing "seasons" of stories.

Aug 20, 2015 10:39 AM in response to Gedders

Your last post could have been written by me! This is exactly what I do...

I have spent the day driving around using Undulib and this will now be the app I use for my audiobook needs. Some (not all) of my chapter titles are back, it mostly seems to remember the playback position and the view is back to what I used to expect.

I cannot figure out why some of my files will not show chapters yet others will. The were made in the same way with Audiobook Builder and should behave the same way.

There are a couple of things that could do with modifying. You can skip forward and backwards by swiping left/right on the screen where the 30 second skip button etc is located. The amount it skips doesn't seem constant and the harder you swipe the more time is skipped. It's a nice idea but almost impossible to use when driving along. I skipped entire files when I hit a bump at the same time as trying to skip back 30 seconds. Maybe a +/- 5 mins button either side of the 30 seconds one and an option to turn off the swipe?

Also it would be nice if there was an option for there to be a repeat of, say, 10 seconds when playback is resumed after an interruption for a phone call or playback has been stopped. A quick recap of the last few seconds is good to pick the story up again after a stop.

Does the app have different functionality if a file is tagged as drama rather than book, or is that just cosmetic?

All in all this is a good starting point and hopefully will get Audiodrama playback back to where it should be. I know there are problems that are caused by the way iOS8.4+ handles files created with Audiobook Builder, and with their record of development (NONE!!!) I'd be amazed if they change anything soon. They have been "working" on a ver2 release for about 4 years (The current version 1.5.3 was released in Nov 2011) and while they talk a good game about being in touch with Apple they seem to wait until Apple resolve any problems. I don't for one second regret buying the app and would endorse this in the hope others buy it, support the developer and improve the app. 🙂

If the OP of Undulib has suggestions about the best way to created Audiobooks that will play back with issues I'm sure everybody here would be grateful.

Aug 20, 2015 10:51 AM in response to swampsnake

Thank you so much for the response! If you like my app, please consider leaving a review.

swampsnake wrote:

I cannot figure out why some of my files will not show chapters yet others will. The were made in the same way with Audiobook Builder and should behave the same way.

Please contact me via support@undulib.com and we'll see if I can figure out what's going on. If you didn't catch it, I'm the developer of Undulib 😉

I know chapters don't work for Audible books (stuff with DRM) in iOS 8 but do work in iOS 9 for some reason...

swampsnake wrote:

There are a couple of things that could do with modifying. You can skip forward and backwards by swiping left/right on the screen where the 30 second skip button etc is located. The amount it skips doesn't seem constant and the harder you swipe the more time is skipped. It's a nice idea but almost impossible to use when driving along. I skipped entire files when I hit a bump at the same time as trying to skip back 30 seconds. Maybe a +/- 5 mins button either side of the 30 seconds one and an option to turn off the swipe?

Two things going on here:

First, the skip 30 second buttons are just skip buttons.

Second, anywhere around the << || >> buttons can be dragged as if you are dragging the progress indicator. It's just a clever gesturey way to move around. The reason it's not consistent is because you can use this gesture to position the playback anywhere you want. When you swipe, notice that another progress indicator appears that will let you precisely position the file where you want to be.

swampsnake wrote:

Also it would be nice if there was an option for there to be a repeat of, say, 10 seconds when playback is resumed after an interruption for a phone call or playback has been stopped. A quick recap of the last few seconds is good to pick the story up again after a stop.

Does the app have different functionality if a file is tagged as drama rather than book, or is that just cosmetic?

I'll think about the 10 second idea, I remember Instacast did something similar. Sometimes I liked it, sometimes I don't.

The audiodrama tags are purely cosmetic. But can be helpful to keep your stuff organized.

swampsnake wrote:

If the OP of Undulib has suggestions about the best way to created Audiobooks that will play back with issues I'm sure everybody here would be grateful.

I don't have any other suggestions. It's what I use also.

Gedders Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 20, 2015 12:01 PM in response to Hackmodford

Thanks for the clarification.

You covered pretty much everything I needed to know. It's really important for me to be able to select a specific title from a list in the first place. Secondly, unique embedded artwork is important to me, especially as I use AirPlay a lot while my phone is docked, often further away than arms length, so I can see at a glance what's playing.

Thanks again, I'll be installing your app soon. I'll test it on my iPad first - as I'm currently running the 2nd IOS 9 Beta on my phone and it can be a bit bad tempered with both native and 3rd party apps at the best of times!

Aug 20, 2015 1:47 PM in response to Gedders

So I can now fully endorse the Undulib app after finding why some of my files are not showing chapter data and others are.

As I have a very large, mainly lossless music library I have iTunes set to downsample my media files to 256kbs when they are synced to my phone. Otherwise even my 128GB iPhone would be filled three times over!

I create my Audiobooks at 320kbs, as when listen at home I like the music and explosions to have a bit of a kick 👿 but of course they are downsampled along with my music files when they are added to the phone.

The dev of Undulib suspects that iTunes is now stripping the chapter metadata off the audiobook files when they are resampled, so obviously there is nothing to see in the app. If I create a book at 256 then sync all the chapter info is there.

I now have the choice of re-ripping all of my book CD's at 256 (Nooooooooo!!!!!) if Apple never fix iTunes to send the metadata. I think for now I will create 2 copies: One at 320 for storage and one at 256 that I c an listen to when i'm out and about and can be deleted (or more likely stored somewhere out of the way) once I have listened to it.

Either way the dev of Undulib has been helpful to the extreme and I hope this is the start of the perfect audiobook app 😀

Aug 20, 2015 2:28 PM in response to jfaughnan

Actually, Undulib can play books with DRM. Under the hood, im using the stock player to play everything so it should work just fine. However I can't get the chapter metadata for books with DRM 😟 there might be hope in iOS 9 though...

Gedders Author

Level 1

18 points

Aug 20, 2015 2:32 PM in response to Hackmodford

I cannot thank you enough for creating this app - Undulib

THANK YOU!

It has solved all of my audio drama and audiobook problems, that Apple created.

FInally, everything is working perfectly, after months of misery and awkwardness. Now I'm in danger of overloading my iPhone with audio dramas - and not getting any work done! 😀

I'm very, very happy with this app, it's worth every penny. I created this topic in the first place for all of us with these issues to find a solution. No workaround or 3rd party app has been perfect - until now. You deserve everything you earn from producing this app, you've saved a lot of people a lot of time and frustration, I hope more people discover just how brilliant this is and I wish you well in future.

I'll be leaving a 5 star app rating and review in the App Store as soon as possible.➕🙂

---------------

As for DRM audiobook files, they play just fine, without issue in the native iBooks app - and I have a handful of them, I'm not having any issues.

Sep 13, 2015 11:56 AM in response to Gedders

Well - it just keeps getting better...

now iTunes doesn't let me search by Narrator name like it used to.

I have 5 or 6 narrators I like and I used to be able to type their names in and see what audiobooks they narrated. Can't do it anymore.

******* wonderful.

Apple needs to get their **** together and quit screwing things up.

Gedders Author

Level 1

18 points

Sep 14, 2015 4:32 AM in response to Rick15989

It's iTunes I'm having the problem with. It now has a 'Narrator' field in the track properties, but it won't let me put anything in there.

You could try putting the narrator name in the 'Artist' field instead (keeping 'Album Artist' the same as before) and the author in the composer field instead.

JimmyCMPIT

Level 7

29,306 points

Sep 16, 2015 5:36 AM in response to Rick15989

How do I shut off the randomness of pressing play to continue where I left off and it decides I need to go back a few hours more and make the location scrubbing tool completely unresponsive? If I shutdown and reboot it's "theory" of where I left off is unpredictable.

iPhone 4S iOS 8.4 2GB Free

Sep 22, 2015 6:59 PM in response to golfgrouch

I also loaded 9.0 recently and I've noticed it's better as well. It's still not 100% as quick as it used to be but it's close enough for me to call it good. No more lag (that I've experienced so far) and it seems to be keeping track of where I am in my books. We'll call it a win for now. 🙂

tahsali

Level 1

45 points

Nov 10, 2015 4:25 AM in response to Rick15989

Is audiobooks fixed now in ios9? Does it show the chapter titles, not "Chapter 1" for example, but the name of the chapter like, "Lecture 1: Socrates?"

Does it work similarly like iOS8.3 and before?

Thank you

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IOS 8.4 Has Ruined my Audiobooks & Audio Drama Library