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[mmcgregor]

I'm having trouble converinft my .aa (Audible) files to MP3 with Media Centre.

Here's what I'm doing :

1) Right clicking on track I want to convert, then mousing over 'Library tools' and clicking 'Convert Format'.

2) The name of the track I want to convert is then displayed and I click Start.

3) An error message "Failed to Convert" appears with no reason given.


I've tried adjusting and changing the various setting available prior to click the start button, but to no avail. Any help anybody can offer would be greatly apprecited.

Thanks a lot.

[John Gateley]

We can't convert Audible content, it is in a protected format.

j

[mmcgregor]

thanks.

[Alex B]

I don't use Audible, but I've read that the files can be burned to an audio CD without restrictions. If this is true you can burn them to CD-R (or rewritable) discs and rip the CDs in MP3 format.

Naturally re-encoding the highly compressed lossy format will decrease the already rather low audio quality a bit more. Possibly you need to use a higher bitrate than the original files have for keeping the quality reduction acceptable.

[jimn]

Naturally re-encoding the highly compressed lossy format will decrease the already rather low audio quality a bit more.

Audible has 4 audible formats, with progressively increasing quality. Format 1 (referred to as "AM radio" quality) isn't even used anymore. Format 4 is an MP3 format (still in a protected format though). It has a lower bitrate than you would use for music, but quite good for speech--though I don't know how much degrading would occur with re-encoding.

MC11 will only burn the first 70 minutes or so of a title (whatever fits on one CD). A typical book is more like 5-7 times that.

MC12, which is in beta, will do mult-disc burning, including spanning large titles across discs. However, CD burning of Audible titles obeys the licensing restrictions given by the Audible servers. I've heard that there is a limit to something like "1.9" complete burns of a downloaded title (.9 is to allow for errors during the burn), though I have yet to verify whether or not this restriction is actually enforced.

JimN