How should I tag my audiobooks for reading chapters?

[johnf]

Hi,
I have bought the quite hefty priced pro version 2.0 ($9) but still I am not really satisfied with your product.

When I am trying to add local audiobook I want the chapter information to be entered correctly. Currently it just adds the number of mp3 files as chapters. So if the there is 200 mp3 files there is 200 chapters.
So what should I name the ID3 tag to get Ambling bookplayer to read out the chapter information correctly?
I have tried with these tags: CHAPTER, DISC... and what tags for chapter names? Where can get this information, so you can tag your audiobooks correctly?
Alternatively, if there still is no support for reading id3 tags, how should the mp3 files be named for the Ambling bookplayer to read the chapter information. I can't seem to find any information of this in the FAQ section, Users Manual or elsewhere.
Thank you.

[Howard]

When you load an audiobook into the Ambling BookPlayer, you initially tell the player all of the audio files that are part of the audiobook. As the player is loading the audio files you have the option to edit the chapter heading and the chapter title for the book. The player will automatically increment the last chapter heading you entered as the chapter heading for the next chapter. For the chapter title it offers you the choice of using the file name, reading the id3 tag, typing in a chapter name, or leaving the title blank (some authors do not give their chapters titles). The id3 tag that it is looking for is the "Title" or "Song Title" tag.

After you have loaded the book you can edit the the chapter list by selecting the "Edit Chapter Names" button from the "Edit Audiobook" screen. Note that you can return to the "Edit Audiobook" screen anytime for books that you have added from the SD card by holding down your finger on the book title in the library list for 3 seconds and then selecting "Edit Book" from the pop-up menu.

When you press the "Edit Chapter Names" button the list of all the chapters in the book will be shown to you. You can edit this list in several ways. 1) You can combine chapters together to make a single chapter if the chapter spans multiple audio files; 2) You can split a chapter into multiple chapters if the audio file has multiple chapters; 3) You can edit the chapter headings and titles. When you split or combine chapters the player will display a confirmation dialog which has a checkbox where you can indicate if the chapter headings following the chapter that is being split or joined should be renamed so that the numbers continue in the proper sequence.

[johnf]

Thank you for your reply.

The id3 tag that it is looking for is the "Title" or "Song Title" tag.

Not really, I was primary looking for a tag that would tell which chapter a mp3-file belongs to.

1) You can combine chapters together to make a single chapter if the chapter spans multiple audio files

I can only get it to work with two audio files at once.. Is it possible to select more than the next chapter? I have 112 mp3 files divided into 22 chapters, so that would be a lot of pressing.But the easiest way would be if the chapter numbering could just be read from an id3 tag. Thank you

[Howard]

I see the issue you are facing with grouping the 112 audio files into the 22 chapters. Any time the number of chapters and the number of audio files are not the same it does take a lot of work to get the chapter information setup correctly.

We just finished building a very nice application that will let you do this, which is part of the new amblingbooks.com web site. The application shows up on the page where you add the audio files for an audiobook, and it makes it easier to split or join the audio files so the book has the correct chapter boundaries.

In the past, I have spent a lot of time editing the audio information for my audiobooks. After I had listened to the book once or twice, I wished that the time I had spent getting everything set right could have also benefited others.

The new amblngbooks.com site is intended to help with this issue. When one user has taken the time to enter the details for an audiobook then all of the other users get the benefit of that information when listening to the audiobook.

The amblingbooks.com web site will help with this if you are entering the information for free audio content from the internet, or if you are the author or publisher of the audio content. However it doesn't help when you have purchased the audio content and are only able to use it yourself.

I noticed that last week another user who had spent a lot of time getting the audio information setup correctly for a large audiobook series posted the xml book description files here on our forum to share his time and effort with others. He posted the book description XML files created by the Pro edition which have all the information he entered, and which can be used by others who also have the audio files, but still needed the chapter headings, titles, and boundary information.

I am trying to understand your proposal or expectation of how the player could make this easier for you. From your comments it sounds like you were hoping that there was a way you could set the id3 tags of the audio files (for the case where a chapter spans multiple files) so that each file which is part of the same chapter would have the same id3 tag. When the player was reading the id3 tags it would recognize that the tag was the same as the one from the previous file and then automatically join the files into the same chapter.

Please let me know if I have correctly understood what you are suggesting.

Currently the Pro edition will let you write out the XML description file for the book, and it would be possible to edit this file to reduce the number of chapters from 112 down to 22 and then reread the XML file. However there is currently no easy way for you to enter the time boundary information for the 22 chapters short of adding up the time values for the chapters you grouped together to get the new time value needed by the chapter which spans a number of audio files.

When each audio file has one chapter the player lets you load XML files without the time information and then after reading the file time information uses that to automatically fill in the chapter time information.

Perhaps we could add a new XML tag that would also make this work for cases where a chapter spans multiple audio files but still starts and ends on audio file boundaries. If we allowed a new XML tag like <span_file_count> to be part of the <chapter> element where you could enter that this chapter spans 5 audio files then it would be possible for the player to read the audio file times for the 5 files, add them together, and automatically store that as the duration time for the chapter. This would eliminate the need for you to enter the chapter <duration> value. This would only solve the specific case where chapters span multiple audio files, and where the chapters still start and end on an audio file boundary. However that sounds like the issue you are facing.

Your suggestions and comments on how we can make this work better for you are appreciated.

[johnf]

I am trying to understand your proposal or expectation of how the player could make this easier for you. From your comments it sounds like you were hoping that there was a way you could set the id3 tags of the audio files (for the case where a chapter spans multiple files) so that each file which is part of the same chapter would have the same id3 tag. When the player was reading the id3 tags it would recognize that the tag was the same as the one from the previous file and then automatically join the files into the same chapter.

Please let me know if I have correctly understood what you are suggesting.

Yes, you have understood it correctly.
Tagging chapter information in id3 tags would make it very convenient to prepare audiobooks from the computer with a program that edits id3 tags. I could than create a new tag called CHAPTER and then tag the mp3- files with the right chapter numbering.
(A good program for that is mp3tag, go ctrl+o -> "Tag panel" to add new tags).

Alternatively, if you don't like the idea to use a custom tags like CHAPTER it maybe be better to store the chapter info in the in the DISCNUMBER tag which is a default id3 tag. But then the user won't be able to separate between chapters and discnumbers, which maybe good if you are planning to deal with this information in Bookplayer later on.

[Howard]

We have added your suggestion to the list of requested features which will be evaluated for inclusion in future releases.