Audio book files as Podcasts
StewedMonkeyBrains asks:
...has anyone got an easy way to get your MP3s to register as podcasts in the desktop software? Upon initial install one of my books was selected as a podcast, but 30 others weren't... I've tried dozens of things to get another book to register as a podcast with no joy.
I pinged Josh on the product team about this, and he replied...
...anything of genre=podcast will get added to the podcast section. If you want to use the podcast capabilities for audio books, then you should be sure to also set the album title = book title on each section/chapter so that all the sections/chapters get coalated under the same “series”.
Let me know how this works; I'll be trying it out myself tonight!
posted by David Caulton at 1:24 PM
16 Comments:
Bit of synchronicity, I just figured this out the other day when I realized only podcasts have the cool "Resume" feature which is crucial for audiobooks. At first I tried putting all my books in the default podcast category then it dawned on me that I had to change the genre instead.
Three things:
1. How do you get a description to show up? You know the one that appears in the right-hand side in the software or on the device itself?
2. A lot of audiobook providers such as eMusic.com break up a single book into hundreds of tracks. Sometimes I've noticed they are listed in reverse order in the podcast section which isn't too helpful for audiobooks. I've found it best to turn all those little files back into a single MP3. The best program I've found so far is mp3wrap, free and works like a champ as long as you can handle a wee bit of command-line action.
3. I'd like to request that we be able to modify what genres get included in the Podcast section. All my books are genre=Audiobook and I'd prefer to keep them that way. Even if it's a hack like setting a registry key or what not it would be nice to keep my books tagged 'Audiobook' instead of 'Podcast'.
I've also been experimenting with this. I have had a subscription to Audible for several years, and have several hundred books at this point. Because of the DRM, the only good way to get Audible onto the Zune is to use the Audible Manager software to first burn the book to CD, then use Media Player (or Zune) to rip it back to MP3.
When Audible Manager burns to CD, it also breaks the book into many smaller tracks, of about 10 minutes each. I just use the Advanced Tag Editor in Media Player to set the genre to Podcast for all of them, as well as setting the title and artist. Each CD ends up looking like a different podcast, but that's not a big issue.
The second thing to consider is that when you go to the "podcast" for each CD, the tracks show up in reverse order. That was easy to fix. In the Zune software, just right-click on the "podcast" and select "Series Settings". In the Series Settings screen select "Oldest Episodes First".
So that has been my experience. It works, but it's very cumbersome. But at least it works.
I know you folks have a huge pile of things that you are working on. But please pass along one more vote to the Zune product managers for the addition of audio book support in a (hopefully soon!) upcoming release. This is really the only glaring functional omission at the moment, from my point of view. I have some suspicion that the lack of audio book support is due to the fact that you folks may be working on an audio book market of your own. But please don't exclude Audible support. It's the biggest dog in the neighborhood, a lot of us have huge collections at Audible that have been built over many years, and many of us also have very low priced subscriptions at Audible, as a result of having "legacy" accounts from Audible's early days.
Thanks for a great, and steadily improving, product!
This is one of the major items I would like to see fixed in a new release. Hopefully one that we will see in the next few months instead of late next year.
A couple of ideas:
1) Enable the resume for any audio content greater than 5 minutes. Very simple.
2) Groups of podcasts and the ability to listen to all new content from a group.
This helps my Zune use in a number of ways. Currently when one podcast ends, I have to go looking for the next podcast. Very inconvinient when driving. A group would allow me to listen to all of my timely podcasts in the order that they came in. But my audio books and "audio drama" podcasts would be in a different group. Once I am done with the "news", I can switch to a different group that has my book content.
While we're talking about podcasting... I'd really love a way to turn episodes I record on my Media Center into a 'podcast', meaning it automatically adds newlyl recorded episodes to the sync queue.
Hmm, actually this sounds a lot like video auto-playlists with Resume support. Basically I want all new episodes of say South Park to be sync'd with my Zune, with the ability to pause/resume.
With all these suggestions tell the team by way that I love the new software, podcasting support is very slick even if a little minimal.
I found this suggestion in the forums (duh! always check the forums! but wait, I'm Canadian and had too sneak in...) but it hasn't worked for my .m4b formatted audio books yet. I've not had nearly enough time to play with it, but it's a little disgruntling that I even HAVE to (and where's my clock, darnit! :)
Kidding aside, I tried using mp3tagger to change the genre to Podcast (maybe the capital P was the problem?) and poked the Zune s/w a few ways to try to get it to import my files, but no joy. I'll try with MP3s tonight.
The podcast genre works a treat! The Zune software seems to "hang on" to file handles so I needed to make new copies of them before it finally registered that there was a new cast in the monitored directory. Once it found them I was in good shape!
Now... if only I could tell it to play "all" as Rob suggested above. I really hate fumbling with it while driving.
Happy New Year, look forward to Bill's CES Keynote. As far Zune goes, I imagine the biggest news you folks are prepared to announce is some sort of launch outside the U.S.... along with some new content partners. I'm particularly interested in Media Center, Windows Mobile and what Microsoft is doing to take Connected Entertainment to the next level.
Any new Zune accessories announced at CES?
Forgot to ask since this post is about Audiobooks...any new content partnerships that have been announced at CES?
whats happening?
I've been editing my comedy cd's in tag editor to get it right in the podcast section and in the right orders. (i like haveing descriptions and breaking points in them so don't want to combine) has anyone else noticed that when you delete a podcast you can not just delete it from the collection or zune software? it actually deletes it permanetly bypassing the recycle bin! big problem for newbs who make mistakes.
if you guys make a mistake and want to order your audiobooks differently, do you just rename the title? my experience was that software didn't update and that how I learned that deleting from podcast section was deadly.
If you search the forums at http://zune.net you'll find some fairly detailed advice on audiobooking. I just keep hoping that MS is fixing it for this iteration, but in the meantime the best thing to do is create your own RSS feed and point the Zune S/W to that. It gives you full control over the order and lets you add cover art, a descriptions and also add files later because the podcast section will keep checking that RSS and updating.
It's not "simple" but if you can get it working it just gives so much more control. The trick is you need a web server - I have XP Pro so IIS (MS's http server) is available to me, but there are free (and tiny) http daemons out there. I keep meaning to try out nanohttpd (http://elonen.iki.fi/code/nanohttpd/) but I haven't yet.
good luck.
thank you very much for the info! I never really thought about doing that because I don't have that much, but I'm a host of podcast so I already have the hosting and space to do it so why not?
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I'm glad to hear that Zune will be increasing its content diversity with Audible support and the rumor'd VideoX. Very good news week even though nothing has been made official. I consider your most recent post about audiobooks to be a teaser post. Keep up the good work. Maybe its time for a new post?!?
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