Hi Paul,
The easiest solution for you would be to create a playlist for your
audiobook files, and then play the audiobook from the playlist. iTunes
adds information based on mp3 tag information in the files. If there
are no tags, it tries to add information based on the name of the
files, which it will use for track names. So if you add tracks to
your library like 001.mp3 that have no tag information, they will be
filed in the iTunes database under Unknown Artist and Unknown Album
but with a track name of 001. This is obviously an issue if you want
to import lots of audiobooks that all lack album and artist
information and are all named 001.mp3 etc. So one way to fix this is
to add this information when you import the files via the "Get Info"
command (shortcut Command-I) using the "Info" tab to fill in the
Artist (author) and Album (book title), which is the minimal
information you need to supply. Again, just as with using the
"Option" tab to change "Media Kind" from music to audiobook, you can
select multiple files, and make these editing changes once for all the
tracks you have selected.
The easy way to find items that you've just added to the iTunes
library which do not have tags is to navigate to the "Recently Added"
smart playlist in the sources table. (By the way, I haven't upgraded
to iTunes 10 yet, so my instructions are based on using the last
version of iTunes 9, and I assume this hasn't changed in its
essentials.) In the sources table of iTunes, in addition to entries
for the various libraries (Music, Books, Podcasts, etc.), iTunes Store
entries (iTunes Store, Purchased playlist, etc.), shared libraries (if
you have this feature turned on and are on a network with other
machines that have separate iTunes libraries), and playlists, there
will be a few "smart playlists" that iTunes creates.
The "recently added" smart playlist will contain all tracks that
you've added to your iTunes Library in the past two weeks, that are
not podcasts (from subscription). If you navigate to the "Recently
Added" playlist in your sources table and highlight it (after the
usual manner of interacting with the table, then pressing the first
few letters of the playlist name (e.g. "r e c"), or by using your up
and down arrow keys to navigate (or, alternatively, you could use item
chooser menu with VO-I to located the playlist), then navigate to the
songs table (now renamed under iTunes 10, I'm told) and interact,
you'll be able to find all your recent imports, probably listed in the
order they were added.
For any track in the songs table you can check its location with
Command-R, which is a shortcut for "Show in Finder". This brings up a
Finder window with the selected track highlighted. You can check that
the track conforms to your file organization system under Finder, then
Command-Tab to switch applications back to iTunes. Select all the
tracks you want to tag. These are likely to be ordered contiguously,
so all you need to do is start with the first track in the list, press
the shift key, and arrow down to the end of the entries to select them
all. Then bring up the Get Info window with Command-I. iTunes will
ask you whether you want to edit multiple entries. Just go ahead and
agree that you do. Navigate (VO-Right arrow) to the "Info" tab and
select it (VO-Space) in order to enter the tagging information. VO-
Right arrow to the text fields for "Album" and "Artist" and type in
the title of the book and the author. You can add any other
information you want, such as comments in the comments text box, or
the narrator under "Composer". I usually set the "Genre" pop up
button to "Books & Spoken" but this can be anything you want to type
in, or you can leave it blank. If you want to set these up as
audiobooks, by navigating to the "Options" tab and selecting (with VO-
Space), you can also set the "Media Kind" pop up to "Audiobook" and
navigate to the checkboxes for "Remember Playback Position" and "Skip
when Shuffling" and check them with VO-Space. I usually just press
return when I'm done and escape to cancel, but you can navigate to the
buttons for these functions and press then with VO-Space.
You've now successfully tagged all your audiobook tracks, and if you
also edited "Media Kind" on the "Options" tab, you've put these tracks
into "Books" instead of "Music." I think that by default the "Books"
playlist is no longer displayed in new iTunes 9 setups, nor are "Apps"
for iPhone users. To change this you need to bring up iTunes
preferences with Command-Comma. I would make two changes from the
defaults of iTunes 9 (sorry, don't know the iTunes 10 set up):
1. Under the iTunes preferences menu you brought up with Command-
Comma, navigate to the "General" tab and check (VO-Space) the boxes of
any playlist you want displayed (like "Books", "Apps", "Ringtones", or
"iTunes U").
2. Press Command-W to close your preferences window when done.
Now if you select, "Books" as your playlist under the sources table,
you'll find your entries listed by Track, Album, and Artist under the
songs table. If you navigate to the search text field (Command-Option-
F), and type in the name of the Album or part of the name of the
Album, you'll get only the matching entries in the songs table. You
can navigate to the songs table, interact, and select all with Command-
A. Then if your press Command-Shift-N you'll create a new playlist
from your selection. You can enter a name, or accept the default
playlist name. The default order should be the order in which tracks
were added to your library. If you want to sort on track name (001,
002, etc.) navigate (VO-Right arrow) to the name column and sort with
VO-Shift-backslash. (Non-English keyboard users may need to use the
commands menu, VO-H twice, to issue a sort, since they don't have the
backslash key easily available. Remember to interact before trying to
sort -- this is context dependent.) Sorting is a toggle action. The
second time you perform a sort, the order is reversed between
ascending and descending.
You've now tagged your music and generated a playlist to play your
audiobook tracks in order. Incidentally, if you're importing new
audiobook tracks from CD, it's much easier to use iTunes to join all
tracks, and import 1 track per CD, as long as you're using iTunes or
an iPod to play the tracks, since you can bookmark your location.
There are also specialized programs for generating Chapterized
audiobooks. However, the above method should work for you, and give
you insight into the way iTunes works. Finally, you should never
delete tracks from iTunes with Finder, since the database won't
update, and will simply be erroneous.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
If you navigate to the music playlist, your track entries should
show up with track name (e.g. "001.mp3"), Album (book name) and
On Sep 8, 2010, at 02:35, Paul Erkens wrote:
Hi Esther,
I think I'm almost there. Thanks for your clear explanation. A few
questions though.
My audio books come in numbered mp3 files and I'd like to have them
with me on the iphone. Does itunes take into account the filename
when it imports files into itunes? Of course, for an audiobook, the
order in which the files are played is important.
Do I need to add all, say, 402 mp3 files to one single playlist that
has the name of the book? I'm not sure on how to do this. I was used
to organizing everything in folder trees and neatly named files.
Itunes is different, because I never cared about the mp3 tags, but
now I will have to learn what to do instead. Given 402 consecutive
files that I want to have in one audiobook on the iphone, allowing
me to resume, how do I go about then? I'll tell you what I think I
should do. Please correct me if you see a mistake. At a certain
point I get stuck. You'll see.
1. Given my directory full of files, nicely numbered, I first use a
utility to make the track number field of the mp3 tags inside all
files reflect its filename, so that 001.mp3 gets 001 in its mp3
track tag field. Is this necessary?
2. I would then open itunes and press command plus o to add stuff to
my library.
3. Then I would be in the dialog where you have the choose button,
and from the list of files, I would navigate until I am in the
folder where all 402 mp3 files making up my book are stored. One
folder up is command up, and descend down into a folder is command
plus down. Correct, or is there an easier way? Of course I could
turn quicknav off and arrow up down left right.
4. I then select all files using command plus a and I press the
choose button.
5. Next, I try to find all the new files in my music library. Do I
create a playlist here? Then what do I do? From here I'm stuck. Very
interested to know about this.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Esther" <mori...@mac.com>
To: <macvisionaries@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, September 08, 2010 2:11 PM
Subject: Re: itunes and file tagging
Hi Paul,
The genre field of track in iTunes can be set to anything, and
does not determine whether a file appears in music, photos, ring
tones, etc. A file will show up as a ring tone if and only if it
is basically one of Apple's AAC files (usually with .m4a
extension, if this started as a music file), is under 40 seconds
in length, and has a .m4r file extension. If you clip an AAC
music file to under 40 seconds in length, rename the file
extension from .m4a to .m4r, and import it into iTunes, it will
automatically show up under ring tones. For audiobooks, mp3 or AAC
files in your music library can be placed in this playlist if you
select these tracks, do a "Get Info" with Command-I, then navigate
to the "Options" tab and press the pop up menu button for "Media
Kind" with VO-Space, then arrow down to change it from "Music" to
"Audiobook". To put tracks in to the podcasts playlist, change
the "Media Kind" to "Podcast". You might also want to check the
boxes for "Remember playback position" and "Skip when shuffling"
if you want these tracks to bookmark and be kept out any shuffled
playlists you create. (If your podcast is a music podcast, you
might not want to check these boxes.) The first checkbox lets you
resume your listening at the point you left off. If it is not
checked, your tracks will always start playing from the beginning
(even if they are placed in the audiobook or podcast playlist
because you changed the "Media Kind"). The second checkbox keeps
the tracks from appearing in shuffled playlists which would
otherwise sample your whole library. It can be disconcerting to
listen to shuffled music selections, and suddenly have a track
from an audiobook show up <smile>.
You can select multiple tracks at once to change "Media Kind" on
the Options tab with Command-I. You'll simply be asked by iTunes
whether you are sure you want to edit multiple tracks. Once you
change the media kind of a track that is initially in your music
library, upon exiting "Get Info", the track will disappear from
the music playlist and reappear under Books or Podcasts.
HTH. Cheers,
Esther
On Sep 8, 2010, at 00:38, Paul Erkens wrote:
Hi list,
When importing files into itunes, I suspect that the genre field
in the mp3 tag determines in which playlist (music, photos, ring
tones etc), the imported file is going to appear.
For example, a tag that itunes does not know about, will place
its file in music. If you set the genre tag of a file to podcast,
it might appear in podcasts instead of in music.
Does any of you know about a list of tags to which itunes
normally responds?
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