Audiobook vs Podcast behavior

[Robin in Short Pump 0]

Let's say I've got a few MacCast episodes on my iPhone and I'm trying to catch up. When one episode ends, the next one starts up automatically.

 

I want this behavior when I'm listening to audiobooks we have imported into iTunes from discs. It's not happening. When one disc ends, I have to manually start the next disc. This is not what I want to do when I'm driving on the freeway. Is there a setting in iTunes that we're missing?

 

My husband is my resident iTunes "expert" and he says podcasts and audiobooks work differently, but even he cannot figure out how to make the audiobook discs just play from one to the next.

 

Thanks for your help!

Robin in Short Pump

[Huskermn 33]

Have you tried putting them in a Playlist?

[Apple Geek 15]

How have you been importing them into iTunes? It could be that their Media Kind is set to Music and not Audiobook. I would also try putting them in a playlist like Huskermn suggested or using a great little application called AudioBook Builder [link to website]. It's only $10 and my mom uses it all the time to rip her audiobooks into iTunes. It combines all the chapters into about one or two tracks to keep everything nice and tidy. And when it's finished, it's just a straight drag-and-drop into iTunes. It's worked great for my mom and it may be something you want to look in to.

 

Hope this helps.

[Robin in Short Pump 0]

As I said, we've been inputting the discs into iTunes, combining tracks on each disc, ending up with one file/track/episode whatever you want to call it, for each disc. We rename each disc so that they're consistent and numbered, and run one of Doug's Applescripts for iTunes, make bookmarkable, which makes them look like audiobooks to iTunes (rather than music) and puts them in the audiobooks folder. And then we put them in a smart playlist and sync to my iPhone.

 

My husband mentioned the Audiobook builder app to me last night and I will explore it. Can you listen to the whole audiobook without stopping with that app?

 

In the meantime, since we've already imported all 40 discs and I sure don't want to do that again, is there anything else we can do to make each of these "tracks" play without stopping?

 

Thanks

Robin in Short Pump

[Ginamos 0]

Audiobook Builder will take your input files and join them into bookmarkable AAC files with chapters. The number of output files created depends on how you set the options, the default is to break the files if they exceed 12 hours play length. So a 14 hour audio book will result in 2 files, regardless of how many input files there were. If you want to ensure continuous playback of the whole book, you can just change the default playback length so that one file is created.

 

I'd thoroughly recommend Audiobook Builder, I've tried several solutions, including the Doug's Applescripts app, AB is by far the best.

[Robin in Short Pump 0]

Audiobook Builder will take your input files and join them into bookmarkable AAC files with chapters. The number of output files created depends on how you set the options, the default is to break the files if they exceed 12 hours play length. So a 14 hour audio book will result in 2 files, regardless of how many input files there were. If you want to ensure continuous playback of the whole book, you can just change the default playback length so that one file is created.

 

I'd thoroughly recommend Audiobook Builder, I've tried several solutions, including the Doug's Applescripts app, AB is by far the best.

 

I would expect that 47 hours of listening time is not what I'd want to put in one file. So even if it broke that down to 4 files (and I'm presuming that I still have to start each file manually, nobody here has said yet that you don't) 4 times in 47 hours is better than once every hour which is about what I'm looking at now.

 

Thanks for the Audiobook Builder recommendations, I'll go get it for my future books.

 

Robin in Short Pump

[Apple Geek 15]

I'm pretty confident that if you build the book with AudioBook Builder and import it into iTunes you don't have to start each file manually. Either way, I don't see any harm in making one or two files, it's still going to take up the same amount of space whether it's in one file or ten.