Filed under: Audio, iPod Family, iTS, iTunes
Turn audiobooks into Audiobooks
Playlist Magazine has a nice little tutorial for converting audiobooks you obtain from somewhere other than Audible.com or the iTS into iTunes recognized Audiobooks. For instance if you rip an audiobook CD, or download free audiobooks from any of a number of sites, you can convert them so that they will appear as Audiobooks on your iPod and in iTunes which gives you access to bookmarking and speed controls. Basically, it consists of joining the tracks and converting the result to a special type of AAC (.m4b), but check out the tutorial for full details.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rubbinz said 10:56PM on 2-01-2007
I use Audiobook Builder. Found it last December when I was searching Macupdate. Well worth the $10.
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Daniel D said 11:00PM on 2-01-2007
I just dont mind having them in a playlist and of course setting it to remember where you left of, I have no interest in speeding them up.
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Roustem Karimov said 11:56PM on 2-01-2007
I second Audiobook Builder. It is very easy to use and it saves a lot of time.
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Ivan said 1:59AM on 2-02-2007
Well, I for one am very greatful for this advice. Audiobook builder sounds great and all, but seriously, why pay ten dollars when this method is fast, free, and painless?
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tim said 11:34AM on 2-02-2007
This is, so far, the biggest issue for me since switching. Dealing with files in iTunes is a huge pain, compared to the Windows Explorer-shell-based dbPowerAmp that I used in XP. Highlight the mp3s, right click, convert to m4a, then highlight them all and use Better File Rename to automatically change m4a to m4b. Done. Doing the same in OS X all of a sudden introduces iTunes Library nonsense that I'd really care not to use.
iTunes is very good for many things, but it's so parochial compared to shell extensions in Windows.
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Rob said 12:59PM on 2-02-2007
Great tip! I've ripped several audiobooks and was frustrated with iTunes for not recognizing the files once I had set the "genre" to audiobook. Thanks.
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Donald Burr said 1:39PM on 2-02-2007
The problem with leaving your audiobooks as normal mp3/aac files is that they are treated just like other songs in your library, namely if you use the "shuffle songs" option, you'll get your audiobooks shuffled in with the rest of your music. This used to happen with videos too; I'd hit shuffle on iTunes, and every once in a while, a video would pop onto the screen. Highly annoying. That's why iTunes recently added the separate "TV shows", "Movies", "Podcasts", "Audiobooks", etc. "sub-libraries" that are kept separate from the main (music) library. Now when you create smart playlists, etc. you don't accidentally get a video or an audiobook in the mix with your music.
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Rod said 4:11PM on 2-02-2007
Regarding the previous comments, you can select the tracks in your audiobook and edit their info, set them to be excluded from shuffle.
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Dave Wheeler said 2:23AM on 2-25-2007
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