How to Import an Audio Book on CD into iTunes
It’s no secret that an iPod can do much more than play music. Movies, pictures, and audio books can also be loaded onto your iPod making it more than just an digital music player. In a previous post I described how to rip and load a DVD movie onto your iPod with free software. Now, I want further extend the functionality of an iPod by outlining the process for ripping and loading a CD audio book.
Originally I struggled with how to approach this topic. I wanted to create a short list of simple steps, but soon found that depending on what you wanted to achieve, the total number of steps varied. Also, within each “step” was a list of several little steps, which was making my original idea difficult to layout. The simplest way to present this topic is to describe the basic process knowing that each person will transform what’s presented into a series of steps that best suits their needs. Therefore, I recommend you read the entire article, decide which parts of the process work for your personal preferences, and then create your own list of steps for “importing an audio book into iTunes.” Let’s get started.
Change your iTunes import settings
Most people have their import settings configured specifically for importing music. Everyone has their own personal preference for a bitrate that strikes the ideal balance between file size and audio quality. When it comes to audio books, however, you can strike a good balance with a much lower bitrate setting than what you normally use for music, and iTunes provides a import setting specifically for this purpose.
- Start iTunes.
- From the menu bar select Edit -> Preferences.
- Select the Advanced tab in the dialog box that appears.
- Select the Importing tab.
- Make note of your current settings on this screen. You’ll need to return to these settings once your finished importing your audio book.
- Set the Import Using drop down list to AAC Encoder.
- Finally, set the Setting drop down list to Spoken Word. This setting will import mono audio at 32 kbps and stereo at 64 kbps.
Note: You can try a “Custom” setting and force a lower bitrate; however, I’ve tried 20 kbps for mono and 40 kbps for stereo and the result had an annoying clipping at the end of words. The preset Spoken Word setting is probably as low as you should go. The audio quality is decent and the file size of a single CD compresses down to approximately 25 MB — not bad for an entire CD of material.
If you want it now, import it like a regular music CD
Audio books CDs are no different than a music CD with the exception that an audio book typically spans several CDs rather than just one. Each CD contains one or more chapters of the book broken down into smaller track sections. Therefore, if you just want your audio book on your iPod as fast as possible, the steps outlined below are all you need.
- Insert the first CD of the audio set and wait for iTunes to recognize the CD and lists the tracks.
- If dialog box appears asking you if “you would like to import the CD,” answer yes. If not, just press the Import CD button in the lower right corner of the iTunes window.
- Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each CD in the audio book set.
- After each CD is imported, select the “Recently Added” playlist. You should see a long list of tracks you just imported at the top of this playlist.
- Click on the first audio book track. Hold down the shift key and select the last audio book track. This will select all of the tracks that make up the entire book.
- From the menu-bar select File -> New Playlist from Selection.
- Accept the name iTunes gives this new playlist or enter your own.
- Connect your iPod and make sure you have this new playlist selected as a something to sync. If necessary, manually force a sync.
- As a final step, reset your audio import settings you changed back in the first section of this article from Spoken Word back to your original music import settings. Save your changes.
The benefit of importing audio books this way is that it’s fast and easy. A playlist based on the audio book’s tracks makes sense; however, the track listing is usually long and the final import will NOT appear under the Audiobook section of your iTunes library. Other than those two minor inconveniences, you’re done. Go ahead and start enjoying your audio book.
Fixing a generic track listing import
At some point after you insert a CD into your drive, iTunes will try to “detect” the details of each track on that CD. Normally, the CD details are successfully found in the CDDB (Compact Disk Database — I think). Unfortunately there are times when the CDDB look up is unsuccessful which leaves you with a generic track listing (e.g. track 01, track 02, track 03, etc). Ignore this problem during the CD import process; however, once the import is complete, follow the steps listed below to correct the generic listings:
- Switch to the Recently Added playlist or the Music library view.
- Locate the newly imported file(s).
- Right click on the title and select Get Info from the pop-up menu.
- Select the Info tab and start manually inserting the information you find useful for each track.
I like enter the book title in the Name and Album fields. I enter the author in the Artist field, the reader in the Composer field, and which disk this is out of the total disks in the Disc Number section. Also, if I’m not “joining” all of the tracks on a single CD (described in the next section), then I need to make sure that Track Number has some unique number for each individual track so the tracks sort correctly.
The CDDB look up isn’t very consistent. Sometimes it will exact CD information, and sometimes it won’t. Other times it will find the information for some of the CDs in the set, but not all of them. Even stranger is when it finds slightly different information of a CD in the set. Whatever information is found, or not, doesn’t matter. You can always manually edit any of the information so that the final listing is something that works well for your needs.
Avoid long track listings by “joining” the contents of a single CD
A typical audio book is made up of a set of CDs. If you import the CDs and make a single playlist for the book as described above, you typically have a very long list of tracks in that playlist. If that bothers you, then you can import all of the contents of a single CD into a single track by “joining” them together during the import process. Here’s how.
- Insert the first CD of the audio set and wait for iTunes to recognize the CD and list the tracks.
- If dialog box appears asking you if “you would like to import the CD,” answer no. You still have a few selections to make before you import the CD
Note: If all goes well, iTunes was able to retrieve all of the necessary title and track information from the CDDB and you will have something that looks like the screen shot shown below.
- Select the first track in the list, hold down the shift key, and select the last track in the list. Now all of the tracks from the CD are selected
- From the menu bar select Advanced -> Join CD Tracks. If this option is grayed out, you’ve done something wrong. Try to repeat the above steps to correct the problem. If all went as planned, you should see a thin line along the left side of the track listing and a single check box next to the first track as seen in the screen shot below
- Press the Import CD button at the lower right corner of the iTunes application. Depending on the size of the CD and the speed of your computer, the import process time will vary. I average between 5 to 10 minutes per import. Keep in mind, the process takes awhile because you’re combining all of the tracks into a single audio file
- Repeat steps 1 through 5 for each CD in the audio book set
Remember, I’m describing the process for importing an audio book from a CD set, and grouping the audio files into a single track for each CD. This approach basically replicates the CD distribution of the audio book.
At this point you can select all of the “joined” tracks and create a playlist as previously described. Joining tracks leaves you with fewer tracks in the end making the audio book a little easier to manage.
Make your audio book appear in the AudioBook section of the iTunes library
Finally, if you don’t want your audio book in a music playlist, here ’s how to get your newly imported audio book to show up in the AudioBooks section of your iTunes library.
- Find the newly imported files in your iTunes Music library and right click on one of the files.
- From the pop-up menu, select Get Info.
- Click on the Summary tab and look near the bottom for the Where information and make note of the folder location for this file.
Note: iTunes imports CDs in the strangest way, which means a set of related CDs like an audio book don’t always end up in the same location. You might have to verify the location of each imported CD as described above so you can relocate them to a single location to make the rest of this process easier.
- Close iTunes and open Windows Explorer.
- Navigate to the folder location of the imported file.
- Right click the file and select rename.
- Change the file extension from m4a to m4b.
- A dialog box pops up warning you about changing the file name. Just answer yes when prompted.
- Repeat steps5 through 8 for each file that makes up the entire audio book CD set.
If you don’t see the file extension in Windows Explorer, you’ll need to rename the file from the good old command prompt (a.k.a DOS prompt):
- Click on the Windows Start button.
- Find and click on Run.
- In the pop-up box type “command.com” and press enter.
- The command prompt window opens.
- From here, type “
CD <complete path to the folder that contains your file>” and press enter. - Once you have reached the correct folder (a.k.a directory), type “DIR” and press enter to confirm that the file you want to rename is where you think it is.
- If the file shows up in the directory listing, type “
RENAME <complete file name>.m4a <complete file name>.m4b“. Notice that you are simply changing the file extension from “m4a” to “m4b“. That’s all. If you have some or all of the files in this folder, you can change all of the extensions at once by typing, “RENAME *.m4a *.m4b” and press enter. - Type “
DIR” and press enter to verify that all of the audio book files have the new extension “m4b”.
Once you change the file extensions the track listing in iTunes will no longer work. To correct the problem, and to get the audio book to appear in the Audiobook section in iTunes, follow the steps listed below:
- Start iTunes.
- Locate the track listing for the previously imported audio book CDs.
- Select these tracks and press delete.
- Click the Remove button in the confirmation dialog. This action simply removes the “pointers” to the original files, which no longer exist since we just renamed them all.
- From the menu bar select File -> Add Folder to Library.
- Navigate through your folder structure until you reach the folder that contains all of the individual audio book files
- Click OK.
iTunes will import each file and you should know see an Audiobook icon appear under your library listings. Click on this icon and now your newly imported audio book is right where it belongs — in the Audiobook section of your iTunes library.
Final important step — putting everything back
To maximize disk and iPod space, I walked you through the process of changing your import settings. Now that you’re done importing your audio book, return to the first section of this article and revert all of your import settings to what you had originally. If you fail to execute this final step, the next music CD you import will sound terrible.
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[...] Bret wrote an interesting post today on How to Import an Audio Book on CD into iTunesHere’s a quick excerptFind the newly imported files in your iTunes Music library and right click on one of the files. From the pop-up menu, select Get Info. Click on the Summary tab and look near the bottom for the Where information and make note of the … [...]
[...] Go to the author’s original blog: How to Import an Audio Book on CD into iTunes [...]
Excellent tutorial! I was stuck on getting downloaded audiobooks to show up as such in iTunes, this method works fine in that case, too (as it should). It seems obvious about the format and file extension change now you have said it. Thank you for taking the trouble to create this tutorial.
So far, I have not not yet tried importing Audio Books on CDs to Itunes. Thanks for this tutorial, this could help a lot if I want to download some files in the future.
TableRappers, glad I was able to shed some light on how to make the audio book appear in the Audiobooks section of your iTunes library.
Guy, I’m glad this article might serve as a good resource should you try an import an audio book in the future.
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article How to Import an Audio Book on CD into iTunes, but I guess I just need to check some more resources regarding this, because it sounds interesting.
Hi Aaron, I’m sorry to read you didn’t understand certain parts of the article, perhaps I can help. Exactly what part of the article is confusing you? Please let me know and I’ll try to add more detail.
Thanks for the comment.
I read similar article also named How to Import an Audio Book on CD into iTunes, and it was completely different. Personally, I agree with you more, because this article makes a little bit more sense for me
Hi Daniel, glad the article made sense. Sometimes it helps to hear another voice explain something.
Thanks for the comment
[...] them as such. But I couldn’t figure out how to do it, so I Googled around, and found this blog post that explained in great detail how to do it. Now I can set up my talks and audiobooks so that they [...]
[...] an digital music player. In a previous post I described how to rip and load a DVD movie onto yourhttp://www.techtraction.com/2008/06/09/how-to-import-an-audio-book-on-cd-into-itunes/2012: No Killer Solar Flare Universe TodayWe could be in for a huge firework display in 2012. The [...]
Before reading this excellent article, I had a 3 CD audiobook that I recently imported using the default settings. Another blog suggested renaming to .m4b & then dropping back onto iTunes. That worked & all 3 CDs show up in the Audiobooks section.
However, when playing a track, when it gets to the end it’s almost like it doesn’t finish the last seconds of that track completely before immediately playing the next track. So it seems like both tracks (the end of track 1 and the beginning of track 2) are playing simultaneously. Then track 1 ends and track 2 plays nicely until the end…then the cycle repeats itself.
Have you heard of this problem before and might have a solution?
Thanks in advance.
I haven’t heard of this problem before but I believe your problem has to do with the audiobook individual files being set as “part of a gapless album” (not certain if that is the exact wording iTunes uses).
Click on one of these individual files that has the problem, then right-click with your mouse and select the Get Info option. On the option tab there is a setting that says something similar to “part of a gapless album.” Deselect this option and test the playback and see if that solves the problem. Also, in your iTunes preferences, there is a playback section that also controls how audio is played back. I believe there is also further control of the gapless playback option here too.
Hope that helps and thanks for the question.
Bret, The how to import an Audio book helped me a lot but somehow I deleted in Itunes “Recently Added Playlist” so that this does not appear on my screen now. What do I do after I select all the tracks? Thanks Dan
Hi Daniel and thanks for the question. The “Recently Added” playlist is just a “Smart List” and it’s very easy to recreate. I’ll write up the instructions for you in today’s (8/27/08) post. Check back here for an updated link or TechTraction’s main page later today.
Here’s the link to the post that explains how to recreate the “Recently Added” playlist.
Hi, Bret, Don’t hurry with your reply. I will be away from my computer for a week anyway. Thanks for all your help. Dan
Thanks Daniel. I’ll reschedule the post for next week so it doesn’t get buried on my site.
Bret, I am back on my computer now so you can send your fix. Thank you
Hi Daniel, you can find my suggestions for solving your sort problem in yesterday’s post: http://www.techtraction.com/2008/09/17/4-suggestions-to-solve-itunesipod-sorting-problems/
Hope that helps.
Thanks Bret That worked!
Sorry it took me so long but I’m glad it helped resolve your sorting problem.
Thanks again for the comment Daniel.
I wrote a post on joining audiobooks and adding chapters
http://blog.garthdb.com/2008/09/how-to-make-an-itunes-ipod-audiobook-tutorial/
Thanks so much for taking the time to post such a great tutorial! I was getting really frustrated, and could not figure out how to get my CDs into my itunes Audiobooks folder, even after searching the support pages endlessly! Your system works perfectly, I am so relieved. Thank-you!
Michelle, glad you found the article useful. Thanks for the positive comment.
Thanks for the great information. This is the first time I’ve uploaded books off a cd instead of audible and so far so good.
CJ, glad you found the article useful. Thanks for visiting and leaving a comment.
Great info THANK YOU! I’ve been using another tutorial with good results BUT there are times ( not with every book ) when my playback is choppy/glitichy &/or repeated words. I’m using iTunes 8. I have loaded the Audiobooks, using different settings. The last book I loaded (16 discs, please don’t ask why I didn’t check at anytime during to see if it sounded good) I imported using… ACC Encoder…Custom setting; 96kbps (stero) using voice filtering, optimized for MMX/SSEz. Also error correction box is checked. Now I used a higher kbps because I thought my problem was a lower bit rate.
Once all discs are loaded I make a new folder outside of iTunes, I then move the joined discs to this. When I am ready to listen to this book I move the whole file into iTunes and set it as an audiobook. Do you have any advice or do you see something I should do different???
Thank you for your help, Joyce
Hi Joyce, couple of quick questions/suggestions:
If you play the audiobook on your computer, does it still sound choppy?
Can you try and play the file with another media player such as Microsoft Media Player, or something like WinAmp? If so, is the audio still choppy?
Let me know the outcome of those questions and I’ll see what else I can suggest to solve the problem.
Bret,
Thank you very much for your detailed how-to.
One thing I would suggest is that you can make the files show in the Audiobooks much easier by:
1. Right clicking the file/files and choosing Get Info.
2. Click on the Options tab.
3. Change the Media Kind to Audiobook.
This will change the extension for you and move the file into the Audiobook folder in the Library.
Matt
Hi Bret, OK here’s the scoop… I can play the audiobook on my PC it’s sounds staticy & choppy same as on the iPod. I tried it in Quicktime & Media player.
Hi Joyce. Sorry for the delayed response.
My gut is telling me the source of your problem is your computer’s sound card. I’m assuming that you used the same computer for audio book importing, syncing with your iPod, and sound testing with Quicktime and Media Player.
Try and import some other CD into iTunes and see what the quality sounds like. Remember, use the same import settings you used for the original audio book. Any music or other audio book CD will work fine for this test. If the choppy static quality appears on this newly imported CD, we’ve narrowed down the possibility to the sound card or maybe even the import settings themselves.
Try to rule out the import settings by deleting what you just imported. Adjust your import settings to a higher quality (I suggest the 192kbps for MP3s). Now, re-import the same CD and listen to the results. If choppy static quality remains, then the problem is not the import quality setting because 192kbps is pretty high and shouldn’t sound choppy or static. At this point it is most likely your sound card in the computer; however, it could also be the CD source (the audio book itself).
To rule out the source as the problem, try and listen to the audio book CD in a normal CD player. Not the one in your computer. Do you hear static now? If so, the CD source is the problem. Try to clean the CD and try again. If the problem persists, then you can’t do much and just have to suffer with the quality. If, on the other hand, no static was heard the first time you tested, and your previous import attempts had static, then the problem is the sound card in your computer. To fix that, you’ll need to buy a replacement like a SoundBlaster card from Creative.
Hope that helps. If I get time, I might write up a quick how-to resolve choppy static audio quality in iTunes imports. A final answer may not exist, but at least it will include a detailed how to narrow down the source of the poor audio quality performance.
Bret, I’ve been CRAZY busy so it’s been awhile, BUT I to thought it was my sound card and/or import settings. I used a NEW cd & tryed both ideas. Looks like I either have to import @ higher kbps, although I still have moments of glitchy speech. I have also found that a few of my songs have a scratchy sound & I have to re-import them as well. I think I might have to test more to see if it’s my sound card. I have had a problem after importing a few cds that all sound on the PC is choppy, I then have to re-boot. Maybe getting a new sound card is a good idea anyway, I got a USB turntable for Christmas & if it’s the sound card I’d rather find out now.
Thanks SO much for your help I’ve learned alot from this site!
Joyce
I am in need of major help with this process. I am most likely the least technically advanced person on the planet. I have searched high and low and cannot seem to figure out how to do this.
Yor instructions say:
Insert the first CD of the audio set and wait for iTunes to recognize the CD and lists the tracks.
If dialog box appears asking you if “you would like to import the CD,” answer yes. If not, just press the Import CD button in the lower right corner of the iTunes window.
Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each CD in the audio book set.
I get the first (of four) CD’s done, but when I insert the second CD I get a pop-up message saying: ne or more of the songs you have selected to import have already been imported. Do you want to replace existing songs and import them again?
The choices I have to choose from are:
1. Replace Existing
2. Don’t Replace
3. Cancel
1. If I choose Replace Existing, it just imports the information from CD #1 with what is on CD #2.
2. With Don’t Replace, I just get duplicates of everything on CD #1. I now the information is not the same on the discs because if I put them into a regular CD player, I can hear that they are all different.
3. Cancel does not import anything.
Perhaps there is an easy answer to this problem, but I sure have no idea what it is. I have deleted what imported from CD #1 and tried to start over. I have searched for different answers and I am just plain stuck!
I do best with simple step-by-step instructions. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Jenn
To solve your problem I think all you have to do is rename the duplicates once they’re imported. As long as iTunes allows you to import the duplicates without wiping out the originals you might only need to rename the track to something that fits in with the overall audio book. Try and right click on the duplicate entries and select get info to closely examine the details of each imported track. What type of information do you see?
Jennifer,
The problem you are having is because iTunes thinks it is the same cd. It is because of this issue that I set iTunes to not look for the names of the tracks.
You find this in on the General tab in iTunes - Preferences.
Here is what I do.
1. Go into iTunes - Preferences
2. Uncheck the box to Automatically retrieve CD track names from Internet
3. Set the Import Settings (I use AAC Encoder, Spoken Podcast)
4. Insert Disk
5. Select all of the tracks (click on one of the tracks, click Edit and choose Select All)
6. Name the Author, Album, Disk Number, and make it Part of a gapless album
7. Click on Advanced and Join CD Tracks (this makes it so that you don’t end up with a bunch of tracks, just the number of CD’s in the audiobook)
8. Click on Import CD
9. Repeat steps 4 through 8 for all of the CD’s
10. Find the tracks in your Music Library and select them all (click on the first one, press and hold shift and click on the last one)
11. Right click and choose get info
12. On the Options tab set the Equalizer Preset to Spoken Word, set Media Kind to Audiobook (This will automatically put the tracks into the Audiobook section of iTunes) and check the box to Remember playback position (so that when you stop and start listening it will put you right back where you stopped)
You can optionally put in any other info you choose, including Artwork.
I have found that this is the quickest way to import your Audiobook. It sounds like a lot but after you do it a couple of times it is really not that bad.
Matt
Matt, thanks for the detailed response for Jennifer. Hope that helps her out.