Setting up iPod AudioBooks…
Ever wanted audiobooks you’ve personally ripped from CDs to show up properly in your iPod? It’s frustrating to lose your bookmark after playing other music, and it’s annoying to have audiobooks mixed among your favorite tunes. After some painstaking trial and error, I’ve found a way to fix them. This procedure has been tested on iTunes for Windows (v5.0.1.4 and v6.0.1.3) and iPod Photo 30GB v1.2. As always, I am not responsible for the use or the misuse of this information; use at your own risk.
- Set iTunes to import using AAC encoder, optimized for Spoken Podcasts. (I normally have mine set to MP3 at 160kbps for importing music.)
- View the CD in iTunes, but don’t import the tracks right away.
- Select all the tracks on the CD, and choose Join CD Tracks from the Advanced menu.
- Click the Import CD icon.
- Find the track in your library, and do a Get Info to verify the information. It is a good idea to use a naming convention that makes it easy to choose the right audiobook and the order of the audio CDs on the iPod, i.e. “Harry Potter Year 1 Disc 7″.
- Through My Computer or Windows Explorer, change the extension of the song from “.m4a” to “.m4b”.
- Go back to iTunes and attempt to play the song. When it tells you it can’t find the song, tell it to look for it, then select the filename with the new extension.
- An optional step, I recommend setting the Equalizer Preset for the track to Spoken Word (found under Get Info / Options).
- Repeat for the rest of the CDs of the audiobook.
Once you sync up, the audiobook CDs will be properly accessible through the Audiobooks menu on the iPod! Woohoo!
I have a special problem when using my Ipod Shuffle (old version) to play loooong audiobook files. I normally merge all the files on the CD to one large file (typically 1 hour) to m4a files, and then rename the files to m4b (using the DOS Command Prompt, “rename *.m4a *.m4b”. This works fine and is very quick).
On the Ipod Shuffle, everything sounds ok for maybe 45 minutes, then the sound is distorted and very jagged. The ipod controls acts very slowly, ie. switching it off may take 5-10 seconds. When the next file is loaded, everything is ok again…..
Anyone who has experienced the same problems? This is very annoying!
Sverre
This info was extremely helpful, easy to follow, and saved my sanity! Thank You!!
i have done this - is there a trick now to get them to play in order. I have the random play turned off. They show in the audiobooks menu but when disc one is finished it goes back to the menu vs. playing disc 2. help….
This all makes sense except step 6 … how do I change the extension? The file doesn’t show up with an extension, merely it’s name and mpeg4 shown under file type column … what am I missing here? Thanks.
Ooops, never mind my last post … found the problem (I unchecked ‘hide known file type extensions’ in Folder Options/View), and it all works! Great to know how to convert to iPod audiobook … a real time and frustration saver, and no need to download separate converter software. Thanks for posting this, Richard … ramble on!
I need to know how to get them to play in the right order! I went through and renamed them all in terms of 1, 2, 3, 4,5, etc. and it still shuffles them all up! I am getting very frustrated!