From: Chris Holt <amiga2k_at_cox.net>
Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 14:49:03 -0400

On Wed, 21 May 2003 12:16:24 -0400, Jonah, Jim wrote:
>I've been struggling with a good, quick workflow for getting Audible
>books onto my Jukebox (due to their "Playback" protection, sheesh!).
>
>Currently I'm playing the file on my Mac and using Audio Hijack to
>record it. Then I'm using pymp3cut (a PHP script) to cut the file up
>Originally I just moved the one long 140 meg file onto my Jukebox, but
>when I had playback issues I decided to try cutting the file up into
>smaller pieces.
>
>Issues I'm running into are: * The PHP script needs to be given a
play
>time that is much longer than the recording actual is in order to
>correctly cut up the file. I suspect the PHP script is flawed - could be
>VBR is throwing it off.
>* Currently the files are cut up into about 45 minute chunks (6
hour
>book).
>* Bookmarking and/or shutting off the jukebox and restarting when
the
>file is about 30 minutes into a 45 minute segments doesn't always work
>correctly - the file will start playing, the hard drive will do a lot of
>spinning, the file will stop playing (though the display keeps ticking
>off the seconds as if it's playing), then the jukebox gives up on that
>file and moves on the next file.
>
>Recently I deleted almost all of my files from the jukebox, ran defrag,
>check disk, and copied back a subset of my files, so
>defragging/checkdisk isn't the issue.
>
>Question: How are others who are listening to Audible books
>handling/processing the long files?
>
>Thanks!
>
>-----------------
>Jim Jonah

It sounds like your problems are VBR related.
I use strictly CBR for my audiobooks. 32kbps _at_ 22khz is usually more
than adequate for spoken word. I haven't really done testing to see if
VBR would result in much space saving at such low bitrates.

All my workflow is done on a PC, so I can't help you with your Mac
process. I use Goldwave for conversion with LAME codec set to the
parameters above. For splitting, I use MP3DirectCut's auto cue feature
then quick jump between the cues and alter them so the splits don't fall
in the middle of a word. Then as a finishing touch I tag with
MP3TagTools, and transfer to the Jukebox. Rockbox Resume and the
Bookmarking patch work great!

Chris
Received on 2003-05-21