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[jerichochicago]

Does anyone know anything about audio book formats? I like listening to them on my iPod during my commute and have purchase a few online. I would be just as happy to buy the discs and rip them myself, but I'm not sure what constitues an "audio book." There must be something special because my iPod recognizes a book separately from music. Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks-
Jake

[SteveG]

Jake,

iPod and MC support Audible's .aa format which is handled slightly differently than other audio content by iPod. .aa is a proprietary format like any other with some different tag attributes.  I do not know that there is a unique feature set which constitutes an "audio book".

Steve

[jerichochicago]

That brings up a couple other questions then.

First, it sounds like there's probably no way, as of now, to create my own audio book by ripping a book on CD. Correct?

Second, after getting completely frustrated with Audibles lousy management software, I tried MC. It played the file with no problem, but I couldn't find a way to send it to my iPod. I ended up downloading iTunes and the Audible plugin just for the audiobook transfer. Is there a way to do the same thing through MC?

Thanks!

[Nolonemo]

You could rip the CD to a lowish bitrate mp3, I assume the CD has chapters so you have one file per chapter, ipod should see it like an album.  You could tag it with a "books" genre, and treat it like any other album.  The Creative players have a bookmark function, don't know if the Ipod does.

[jerichochicago]

Thanks for the input. I may end up doing that.

[lalittle]

The nice thing about .aa files is that they use bookmarks -- i.e. they return to the same place you last left them.  If you rip mp3's instead, you always have to remember where you left off, which typically requires actually writing down the chapter (i.e. "song" title) as well as the time into the track.  You then have to remember where this slip of paper is.  This can get tedious if it's a long book.

Larry

[jerichochicago]

This is true, and brings me back to my original question. Is there a way to rip a book on CD as a .aa file?

[Nolonemo]

This is true, and brings me back to my original question. Is there a way to rip a book on CD as a .aa file?

I did a little googling on this, but though people have asked the question before in other forums, I did not see an answer.  One poster pointed out that .aa is a proprietary format, so developing an encoder would be difficult without audible's assistance.  People seem to be more interested in converting .aa to .mp3 or similar formats, on the whole....

[jerichochicago]

I had the same sort of results. Thanks for the effort, though.

[TXgary]

SteveG. How does the zen handle .aa files?  I would like to listen to audiobooks on my zen...
Thanks

[SteveG]

TXGary,

What happens if you transfer .aa files to Zen with their software?

Steve

[TXgary]

I do not have their software installed compeletly.  I only use Media Center...... It's the best and does everything I need it to do.  Should I be using it for the .aa stuff?

[SteveG]

No. We just need to figure out if Zen plays .aa. Try transferring some files with MC and see what happens. I can try this also, but must set up a machine to do the test.

Steve

[SteveG]

TXGary,

I transferred an .aa file to a Zen with MC 11 and the file tranferred fine, but would not play. I tried to use Creative's Media Source to do the same, but could not because I could not import .aa into Media Source. Try checking Creative's site to see if they claim to support .aa. It appears that they do not play .aa and if that is the case, there is nothing MC can do about it.

Sorry.

Steve

[dcpete]

I've been playing around with Audio Books and my Creative Nomad Zen Xtra a LOT.  Yes, it is easy to rip Audio Book CD's and get excellent results.  The Zen Xtra is great with Audio Books.  It remembers where you left off, plus it has a bookmark function that's handy if your chapters are long.  

For MP3 playback, Audio Books on CD's are preferable to Audio Books on Tape, for several reasons.  One, you can rip a CD much faster.  Two, chapters are usually between 3 and 6 minutes on CD.  They do this, because some CD players do not remember where they are in the middle of the track, but will remember what track you are on.  I have a MP3 CD player that behaves this way.  For example, if you make one track 45 minutes long (length of a typical tape).  These types of players will go back to the beginning of the track when you turn the power off.  If you're 40 minutes into the track, that's not good.  With CD's, you only repeat 3-6 minutes, which is not bad.

But again, the Zen Xtra does not have this problem since it remembers where you left off, plus you can set a bookmark.

I have found an issue with Media Center and certain low MP3 bit rates.  I am currently trying to track the problem down with Creative.  So far the issue appears to be with MC MP3 encoder.  I have found that MP3 bit rates recorded at 32kbps do not play well on the Zen.  That is why I have standardized on 64kbps for Audio Books.  Although 40kbps seems to work fine as well.  I have not experimented with WMA.

For your information, there are plenty of MP3 Audio Books that are recorded at 8kbps and 16kbps for free.  See www.AudioBooksForFree.com .  These files do not play well on the Zen Xtra.  I find 8kbps to be terrible sound quality, but 16kbps to be tolerable.  But there seems to be a firmware bug on the Zen Xtra which makes 8kbps and 16kbps files unlistenable regardless.    For free, I can tolerate 16kbps on devices that play them properly.  I do note that MC does not allow you to encode MP3 below 32kbps, nor does it have an option to encode mono.  Both would be nice options for recording of Audio Books.

Regarding Audible.com.  Creative is working on support for aa files.  Neither site claims support yet.  But I did get a tech support person say that the companies were working together.  It will probably be a future firmware upgrade for the Zen.

Chris

[SteveG]

Chris,

Thanks for your informative post.

Steve

[jimbo_boy]

This is true, and brings me back to my original question. Is there a way to rip a book on CD as a .aa file?

You can also rip the audio book cd into MP3, separating the chapters etc as you please.  Then import into itunes as AAC which will give you the track extension of m3a for each file.
If you then rename each file to m3b and import into MC, the ipod will book mark these files.
I tend to find files of more than 4 or 5 hours give me trouble, often restarting from the start but anything smaller always starts from where i last left it.
Hope this helps.
James

[hans-jürgen]

You can also rip the audio book cd into MP3, separating the chapters etc as you please.  Then import into itunes as AAC which will give you the track extension of m3a for each file.
If you then rename each file to m3b and import into MC, the ipod will book mark these files.

Actually the correct file extensions would be *.m4a for a standard AAC file in the MP4 container format, and *.m4b for the iTunes/iPod audio book file extension which is bookmarkable like *.aa.

Using iTunes the way you described it is one possibility, but is said to take very long. Ripping directly to *.m4a and then renaming it manually or with an Apple script is faster. If you cannot or don't want to use iTunes (e.g. being on Win9x), there's another possibility with foobar2000 and FAAC. I described this method at the end of a very long thread in the iPodlounge forum:

http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=266384#post266384

This might be adapted to Media Center when using FAAC as the external AAC codec.

[jimbo_boy]

Thanks for the fix on the filename extensions.  
I'll have a look at your method as itunes is only installed on my pc to allow for aac encoding.
Cheers