VO-BB - 20 YEARS OLD!

Lee Gordon · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 3:20 pm Post subject: Encoding MP3s for Audible

I'm hoping someone here with experience submitting books to Audible can help me -- and several fellow VO-BBers -- out. We are being told that using ProTools or Adobe Audition to encode our mp3 files causes problems (something to do with Fraunhofer IIS MP3 v04.01.02 and Fraunhofer IIS MP3 v04.00.03 codecs) with truncated files and the only way to convert WAV files to MP3 that is known to work is to use iTunes.

This seems like a major faff to me. There must be a better way. Can anybody offer an alternative to using iTunes that they know will work for Audible?

Thanks.
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Karen Souer · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 3:22 pm Post subject:

I'd be interested in this too, as I just got hired to organize someone's book, and the itunes idea seems a little clunky to me.

For reference's sake, I use soundforge pro 10. Or is it 10 pro? Anyways...
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ConnieTerwilliger · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:35 pm Post subject:

I had no problems using AA1.5 and AA3 to create MP3 files for Audible.
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Jason Huggins · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:53 pm Post subject:

Interesting. I've done two books this year for Audible with no issue or complaint. I use AA CS6

Bruce · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 4:56 pm Post subject:

I record using MOTU's Audio Desk in wav (since most of my clients who want high quality files prefer wav), and then convert into mp3 in iTunes on my Mac. Never had a complaint. It offers a wide variety of settings for converting to mp3, wav, and aiff, but the Audible stuff I've been mastering so far has all been standard 128kbps/44.1 mp3.

B
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Stormtrooper 7 · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 5:03 pm Post subject:

Hey!
Not sure if this will help in this instance, but as far as converting software, I use dbPower Amp. You can download if for free at download.com to try and then get the license for it. I think it's about 30 bucks, (that's what I paid for it a few years back) but once you pay the price for it, you get access to all of the codecs you could ever want. It will convert almost everything to any format. It hasn't missed yet for me. I'm like Bruce where I record everything as a wav and then to convert to whatever format is needed.

Just a thought.
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Lee Gordon · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 5:11 pm Post subject:

Judging from some of these responses, I'm beginning to think perhaps the issue resides with the proofer's set-up and not with files being sent to him. I may just go ahead and convert my WAVs the way I normally do and send them in and see what happens.
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Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

Karen Souer · Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 8:28 pm Post subject:

It did sound a little wonky to me, the whole codec issue.
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ChrisMezzolesta · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 8:03 am Post subject:

Not sure if Apple has their own proprietary codec, or if they licensed Fraunhofer (or LAME for that matter), but I'm pretty sure that SF Pro uses some form of Fraunhofer (the original MP3 codec IIRC) - could the differences be that great as to be noticeable?, or could it be that the person at Audible is a $8/hr type person off the street and thinks an mp3 is just something you play on an iPod?? just throwing that out there...
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Scott Pollak · Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 10:05 am Post subject:

Lee, you and I are voicing books for the same company and I find this annoying at the very least and ridiculous at the very worst. I, too, have edited MANY audiobooks in AA 5.5 with no issues.

Nonetheless, we apparently have no choice as to how we're required to do this. Here's a short video showing exactly what to do, to bring your .wav files into iTunes and do the conversion:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOfUWY2X3Lk

Be sure to look at the screen shot you were also sent in the e-mail from Vanessa showing the exact .mp3 settings in iTunes. This is an enormous P-I-T-A, but I guess we have no choice. I'm choosing to voice and edit the entire book prior to doing any uploads now, so that I can THEN devote an hour or two to doing nothing other than converting the darned files in iTunes.

Sigh. You'd THINK, in an era where we have the 'cloud' and wi-fi everything and space travel, that audible could handle simple .mp3 encoding.

You'd THINK.
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Scott R. Pollak
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Lee Gordon · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 4:14 pm Post subject:

I recorded my whole book as WAV files and then just converted them to mp3s in the way I normally do and uploaded them. I figure, if I have to do corrections anyway, I'll make those to the WAV files and then convert them with iTunes if I have to. But I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
_________________
Lee Gordon, O.A.V.
Voice President of the United States
www.leegordonproductions.com
Twitter: @LeeGordonVoice

Festus · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:27 pm Post subject: Why not .MP3 all the way?

I just got my first ACX audiobook project. I was going to record and save it in .MP3. Why would you record in WAV or AIFF which as far as I know are data hogs? For a single voice I wouldn't think you can really tell the difference in quality. As I've been told, the extra frequencies that are lost in converting to a compressed file are not within the range of human hearing.
Here is a link that explains the difference in the 3 file formats.
http://www.freestockmusic.com/audio-formats
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Scott Pollak · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 7:49 pm Post subject:

Festus:

- For starters, for ACX you can record and master as .mp3 and that's fine. I know ACX USED to require 192k files, but they may recently have changed that to 128k. Also, unlike Audible, ACX apparently does NOT have any problem reading the encoding on .mp3 from either Pro Tools or Audition.

- Some audible book producers require .wav files. Why, I don't know, since the final product is .mp3 anyway. But especially if you're going to be submitting directly TO AUDIBLE (that is, NOT thru ACX) you HAVE to have your .mp3s encoded via iTunes, and to do THAT, you have to bring a .WAV file into iTunes to do the proper conversion.

At least.... that's how I understand it.
Ridiculous, I know.
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Scott R. Pollak
Clients include Pandora, NPR Atlanta, Wells Fargo, Cisco, Humana, Publix, UPS, AT&T, HP, Xerox and more.

www.voicebyscott.com

bobsouer · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 8:06 pm Post subject: Re: Why not .MP3 all the way?

Jeffrey Kafer · Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 9:14 pm Post subject:

If you want compression without the loss, Flac is a good halfway point between wav and MP3.
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