Longtime Listener, First Time Caller...

eMan · Post by **eMan** » February 6th, 2008, 10:33 am

I love LibriVox. I listen to books from here all the time. I live in Nashville, TN. I couldn't figure out the map thingy from the post above, but cool idea.

Am I the only one who merges all the book files together and makes them into a single .m4b so I can listen to them seamlessly on my iPod?

anna · Post by **anna** » February 6th, 2008, 10:38 am

Welcome eMan,

Have fun here

Cloud Mountain · Post by **Cloud Mountain** » February 6th, 2008, 12:03 pm

eMan wrote:I love LibriVox. I listen to books from here all the time. I live in Nashville, TN. I couldn't figure out the map thingy from the post above, but cool idea.

Am I the only one who merges all the book files together and makes them into a single .m4b so I can listen to them seamlessly on my iPod?

Hi, welcome to LV! Great that you're here.

There's no need to convert the MP3's that LV supplies. In iTunes, create a new playlist for any audiobook collection, just as you would for a music CD. Place all of the audiobook MP3 files into that playlist (folder.) Once they're there and in the correct order, simply sync your ipod. Drag the audiobook playlist to your iPod icon in iTunes. iTunes will create a folder on your iPod and they will play sequentially, automatically, just as any series of songs in a CD album would.

Have fun!

eMan · Post by **eMan** » February 6th, 2008, 1:43 pm

Thanks for the welcomes!

Cloud Mountain wrote:There's no need to convert the MP3's that LV supplies. In iTunes, create a new playlist for any audiobook collection, just as you would for a music CD. Place all of the audiobook MP3 files into that playlist (folder.) Once they're there and in the correct order, simply sync your ipod. Drag the audiobook playlist to your iPod icon in iTunes. iTunes will create a folder on your iPod and they will play sequentially, automatically, just as any series of songs in a CD album would.

I know it's not necessary, which is why I wondered if anyone else goes to the trouble of doing it. I guess you have to be an iPod purist to prefer it this way, but the advantages of going through the merger and conversion are:

(1) the books appear in the"audiobook" section of the iPod and iTunes and not mixed in with the music

(2) they will not be included in any music shuffle you do .

(3) you can use the "bookmark" feature -- with .m4b files, the iPod will remember where you are in the book, even if you leave it, go listen to other music and/or other books, and then come back -- this is even preserved through iPod syncs, so you can listen a little on your iPod, sync, listen on your computer, sync, listen on your iPod again, all without ever having to remember where you were. With regular "music" the iPod only remembers your place for the very last thing you were listening to.

Plus, things are so much less cluttered with only a single file, but I think I'm just anal about all this.

ceastman · Post by **ceastman** » February 6th, 2008, 6:43 pm

Hi, and welcome!

I like to subscribe to Librivox books as podcasts. The chapters are already in order (though they don't have terribly descriptive titles). I use my 1GB Shuffle to listen to them, and find that if I turn the iPod off in the middle of a file, it (and iTunes, when next I sync it) will remember where I was for the next play. I can also play for a while through the computer, and it will automatically remember where those plays stop as well, and sync it properly with my iPod.

But hey, whatever you find easiest for your use.

-Catharine

eMan · Post by **eMan** » February 7th, 2008, 7:17 am

ceastman wrote:I like to subscribe to Librivox books as podcasts.

That sounds pretty cool, too. Can you do that for any book here?

Starlite · Post by **Starlite** » February 7th, 2008, 7:20 am

eMan wrote:
ceastman wrote:I like to subscribe to Librivox books as podcasts.
That sounds pretty cool, too. Can you do that for any book here?

Yuppers! Just check out the catalogue pages and you will see a link to "subscribe in itunes".

Esther

luciburg · Post by **luciburg** » February 7th, 2008, 3:59 pm

Hi eMan, welcome and enjoy.

Lucy

Alderete · Post by **Alderete** » February 11th, 2008, 7:45 pm

eMan wrote:I know it's not necessary, which is why I wondered if anyone else goes to the trouble of doing it. I guess you have to be an iPod purist to prefer it this way, but the advantages of going through the merger and conversion are ...

I certainly go to the trouble, quite a lot of it, to convert MP3 audiobook files into consolidated AAC files, complete with chapter marks, etc., and which iTunes and the iPod treat as true audiobooks.

While you can certainly use the playlist approach, if you're going to keep a lot of audiobooks in your iTunes Library, it will leave you with a lot of playlists, and a huge number of extra tracks when you look at your library as a whole. That can be annoying to more than just the anal-retentive types like myself.

I've posted a pretty detailed article on my weblog about the process of merging down audiobook tracks, "How to join multiple tracks into a single audiobook file," that may be of use. The article covers both Windows and Mac users, recommending different tools for each. (There are free tools for both, but the best is a $10 application for Mac OS X, called Audiobook Builder.)

eMan · Post by **eMan** » February 12th, 2008, 10:58 am

Alderete wrote:I've posted a pretty detailed article on my weblog about the process of merging down audiobook tracks, "How to join multiple tracks into a single audiobook file," that may be of use. The article covers both Windows and Mac users, recommending different tools for each. (There are free tools for both, but the best is a $10 application for Mac OS X, called Audiobook Builder.)

I liked your blog about it. I'm a Windows user and I was glad to see that the tool you recommend is the same as the one I'm using. It's too bad there isn't something for Windows that adds chapter marks the way the Mac tool does (to me, it's not such a big deal for the LibriVox books, since I just listen through and only need the iPod to keep my current place, but it would be handy for some of the foreign language things I have bought where it would be nice to just hit the back button and redo a lesson or drill). Even without chapter marks, though, I like having a single AAC file better than bunches of mp3s.

grampy · Post by **grampy** » February 12th, 2008, 8:51 pm

eMan wrote:Thanks for the welcomes!

Cloud Mountain wrote:There's no need to convert the MP3's that LV supplies. In iTunes, create a new playlist for any audiobook collection, just as you would for a music CD. Place all of the audiobook MP3 files into that playlist (folder.) Once they're there and in the correct order, simply sync your ipod. Drag the audiobook playlist to your iPod icon in iTunes. iTunes will create a folder on your iPod and they will play sequentially, automatically, just as any series of songs in a CD album would.
I know it's not necessary, which is why I wondered if anyone else goes to the trouble of doing it. I guess you have to be an iPod purist to prefer it this way, but the advantages of going through the merger and conversion are:

(1) the books appear in the"audiobook" section of the iPod and iTunes and not mixed in with the music

(2) they will not be included in any music shuffle you do .

(3) you can use the "bookmark" feature -- with .m4b files, the iPod will remember where you are in the book, even if you leave it, go listen to other music and/or other books, and then come back -- this is even preserved through iPod syncs, so you can listen a little on your iPod, sync, listen on your computer, sync, listen on your iPod again, all without ever having to remember where you were. With regular "music" the iPod only remembers your place for the very last thing you were listening to.

Plus, things are so much less cluttered with only a single file, but I think I'm just anal about all this.

I just learned about that feature yesterday and I agree, it eliminates a lot of clutter and puts the books where they should be. But I think it can only be done on a mac. I really haven't checked to see if those conversion scripts are available for windows.

eMan · Post by **eMan** » February 19th, 2008, 10:33 am

grampy wrote: I just learned about that feature yesterday and I agree, it eliminates a lot of clutter and puts the books where they should be. But I think it can only be done on a mac. I really haven't checked to see if those conversion scripts are available for windows.

The only thing you can't do in Windows (at least I can't find a way) is add the "chapter marks" throughout the file. Everything else (basically, merging to a single file AAC that will be recognized and treated as an "audiobook") can be done with Windows scripts. As far as I can tell, there's nothing about Windows per se that prevents it from being done, it's just that nobody has come along to write such a program yet.

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » February 20th, 2008, 12:03 am

Very cool information here. I think we gotta should oughta get some of this into our wiki page for listeners.

I've made myself a note and bookmarked this thread for getting around to some lovely sunny day of leisure.

Oh, welcome aboard, eMan and Alderete and grampy! (emphatically)

a.r.dobbs · Post by **a.r.dobbs** » February 23rd, 2008, 8:18 am

OK, I'm trying this out today. I'm collecting a big batch of audiobooks to load on an iPod and ship off to a dear one in the hospital.

I've read several of the interlinked blog posts about merging [nicely done!] but can't find just one page with all the steps mapped out. So... my typically fractured kind of thinking process may boggle here, but let's see, shall we? I'll start a new thread in the Advice / Suggestions thread so that this thread can return to its function of introducing folks who are new here.