MP3-CDs, iPods and iTunes
Do you have an iPod?
Need a little help getting the MP3-CD book from the disc onto your iPod? Most of our MP3-CDs are iPod ready and the information below may help a little! These instructions are for a Windows operating system and I am assuming that you have already downloaded iTunes onto your computer.
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Open iTunes
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Click edit and scroll to Preferences
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Click the Advanced Tab
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Make sure that "Copy files to iTunes Music folder when adding to library" has a check mark in the box. Click OK.
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Insert an MP3-CD audio book into your computer’s CD Drive.
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Please Note: The MP3-CD will not appear in the iTunes source list like an audio or music CD normally shows up
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In iTunes click on File, scroll to Add Folder to Library, and highlight the CD drive. Click OK
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If you can't find the CD Drive, double click My Computer and you should find it.
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This will start the transfer process of the MP3 files from the disc into iTunes. The process will take several minutes so be patient; you can watch the transfer progress on the top of the iTunes window.
Now that the audio book has been transferred to your Music folder on iTunes, we need to create a playlist so that you can transfer the book onto your iPod. To do this you want to do the following.....
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In iTunes click on File and scroll to New Smart Playlist. This will bring up the Smart Playlist dialog box in iTunes. Make sure that "Match the following rule" is checked. The first rule will default to Artist (at least mine does). By clicking on the down arrow by Artist you will find lots of other options. Select Album, contains, and type in the Title of the book that you just imported. If you want to add more rules, click on the "+" sign on the right. You can then enter the Artist (Author) or other things. When first starting out, just use the Album name. Click OK and you have just created a new smart playlist. You can also create a Playlist from the file menu, but when you do this, you will have to drag and drop your tracks into the playlist. Stick with creating Smart Playlists until you have imported several books, then you can play. If you get an untitled playlist by accident, just right click on it, select rename and name it.
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Now when you highlight your playlist, you should see all of the tracks from the book that you just imported. Make sure that they are all present and in the correct order. It can be very irritating to listen to Chapter 16 before Chapter 6 because the tracks were out of order in the playlist. You can sort your tracks by clicking on the titles at the top of the playlist window. Click on the track header if your tracks are out of order.
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Remember that this process maybe different when importing CDs as you may have to sort by disc number rather than track number.
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Connect your iPod to your computer. Your iPod icon will appear in the Source List of iTunes.
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If you are using the default iTunes settings, iTunes will automatically sync your new playlist to your iPod. If you have changed your settings as I have, you will have to drag and drop your newly created Playlist into your iPod icon. I prefer to control what goes on my iPod so I have disabled the automatic sync option. Once you have dropped your playlist onto your iPod, the transfer of your audio book to your iPod will begin. You can watch this process as before.
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After the transfer is finished, eject your iPod and enjoy your book.
When I first got my iPod I got so frustrated trying to figure out how to get my book from the disc to my iPod. Finally, I found a blog online that was so good it could have been called Audio Books and iPods for Dummies. I have blessed that man so often he should be rich, happy and living in paradise! A few of the tips that I picked up from him…..
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Click edit, preferences, importing
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The quality setting does not have to be as high for audio books. The higher the setting the more room your book will take up on your computer and the difference in sound may not even be noticeable.
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You can play songs while importing or converting, but it will slow down the process.
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“On CD Insert” at the top…set to Show CD or Ask to Import CD. This will give you a chance to view the tracks and make any changes prior to importing. See #2 below
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Some regular CDs and older MP3-CDs are not iPod ready. This basically means that you may need to rename some of the tracks or add Album or Artist information. To do this you can highlight the track and click on Get Info. This will bring up a dialog box with 5 tabs at the top. Click on Info. This will show you the current properties of the track. You can change any or all of this before importing. To change the information in all tracks of a book at once, highlight all of the tracks by clicking on the first track, holding the shift key down and clicking on the last track. Adjust the information and click OK and all tracks will be adjusted at the same time. You will notice that when doing it this way, you will not be able to change your track information. This is because you don’t want all of your tracks to be named the same. To change a track name, you must do each track individually.
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When you have all of your tracks in the correct order, highlight all of the tracks, right click and Get Info as explained above. At the bottom of the dialog box you will see four options. Change “Remember Position” and “Skip When Shuffling” to yes. This will keep your tracks in the correct order. |
