BBC Mp3 Audio CD to an Audiobook in an Ipod

By Steve Evans ©

I recently bought myself a nice new 30gb Video Ipod, and wanted to load my music, films and audio books to it. Uploading music and films to it is easy enough, and if you download audio books from the Itunes store or www.audible.co.uk then that's quite straight forward as well.

I have all the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy CD's from the BBC Radio collection and wanted to load them as an audiobook in Itunes. The problem is that Itunes sees them just as music CD's seeing as all the tracks are Mp3's. So how did I import them as audiobooks? Here's how -

Insert the CD and open Itunes

(Click on the images for a larger picture)

When Itunes has loaded the tracks go to "Edit/Preferences".

Then "Advanced/Importing"

The setting you need are -

"On CD Insert" - "Show CD"

"Import Using" - "AAC Encoder"

"Settings" - "Spoken Podcast"

Click on "OK"

Then "Edit/Select all"

"Right Click" on the blue shaded area and select "Convert Selection to AAC"

You should then see this

When it's finished note all the tracks are still listed in the "Music" section

We now have to rename the extension so it can be imported to "Audiobooks"

So go back to the desktop and click on "Start/My Music"

You'll notice all the tracks have an ".m4a" extension

Rename them to an ".m4b" extension

I just then "Dragged and Dropped" each file into the "Audiobook" page in Itunes

There's just 1 more thing to do before were finished.

Because Itunes will play them in alphabetical order, rename each file with a numerical sequence I.E. 1 -1, 1 - 2

When your finished it should look like this.

Just one thing to remember when you've finished,

Go back into "Edit/Preferences" and change the "Import"

settings back for your music CD's.

Happy listening

 



© RIYAN Productions