webstersprodigy.net

Using this new IPOD I got with my Linux desktop is pretty smooth with amarok, but audio books was one format that was a bit tough to figure out.

One method that works was found at

http://blog.blazingangles.net/whatsthis/2007/09/creating-an-audiobook-on-linux.html

mp3wrap outputfilename *.mp3

where outputfilename is the name of the combined MP3 files. You could call it “audiobook,” for example.

Next, convert the file to PCM. This requires lots of disk space:

mplayer -vc null -vo null -ao pcm:nowaveheader:fast:file=outputfilename.pcm \
  outputfilename_MP3WRAP.mp3

where outputfilename is the same name as you chose for the mp3wrap utility. I’m using mplayer for the conversion, because several other MP3-to-PCM conversion utilities fail as soon as the PCM file size exceeds two Gigabytes.

When you start mplayer, look for a line in the status output that looks something like this:

AO: [alsa] 44100Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)

This output indicates that the audio is output at a sample rate of 44,100 Hz (the sample rate of an audio CD), has two channels (i.e., it’s stereo), and that sample in each channel is encoded in 16 bits, or 2 bytes, as “little-endian” (Intel mode).

Assuming that the parameters are 44,100 Hz, two channels, and 16 bits per sample, convert the PCM file to an audio book using faac:

faac -R 44100 -B 16 -C 2 -X -w -q 80 --artist "author" --album "title" \
  --title "title" --track "1" --genre "Spoken Word" --year "year" \
  -o outputfilename.m4b outputfilename.pcm

This entry was posted on Friday, November 7th, 2008 at 19:40 and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.