iPod Designating MP3 as an "Audio Book"

[dfreer]

Hi everyone,

Just got my iPod, looked around on the internet about my problem and couldn't find the answer. Basically, I have several audio books in .mp3 format that I can't seem to designate as Audio Books (so that they show up in the Audio Books folder on my iPod, instead of in my main music collection. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[milo]

Good question. Anybody know?

 

[BollywooD]

this is what ive discovered,
first you convert the book to aac (.m4a)
then run the following script (make bookmarkeable) to convert it to a .m4b

http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/scripts07.php?page=1#makebookmarkable

hope that helps.

 

[balamw]

As BollywooD implies the iPod will only see M4B and Audible (.aa?) content as proper Audiobooks, but apart from converting to AAC and M4B there is another workaround which is to create a smart playlist called "Audio Books" and include all files that have "Book" or "Spoken" in the genre. Exclude files in this playlist from your other playlists.

The main drive for the "make bookmarkable" script is gone since you can now check the box to remember your last playback postion and skip while shuffling in iTunes, even for MP3s...

Personally, I'd avoid transcoding low bitrate MP3s to AAC where possible. Compression artifacts give me a headache if I'm listening to something long enough... If the MP3 audiobook is encoded at 192 kbps or better, you might be able to get way with it.

B

 

[BollywooD]

the procedure i provided earlier tags the file as an audiobook on your ipod, but not in itunes.... but if you process it (again) throu lostify - it is displayed as an audiobook in itunes too!!

 

[Veldek]

the procedure i provided earlier tags the file as an audiobook on your ipod, but not in itunes.... but if you process it (again) throu lostify - it is displayed as an audiobook in itunes too!!

I think reimporting the files after using above script should work, too.

 

[balamw]

I think reimporting the files after using above script should work, too.

Further clarification about re-importing.

I haven't used the script recently, but I do convert M4A to M4B somewhat regularly using a simple hex editor, and I find that you need to remove the M4A files from the library entirely and import them as M4B for both iTunes and iPod to recognize them as audiobooks. Don't just have iTunes ask you where to find the file.

B