Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I couldn't agree more! I would like to see Nokia support AMR-WB in the N-Series Tablets. Another possibility is that Canola could someday support it (though I think Canola may be only a front end and may need some other program to do the audio file decoding).

You stated the case very well.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I would rather a better full featured ebook. Something about my mind doing the voices that beats audio books. FBreader is ok, but I am thinking about getting a sony ebook reader just for a decent ebook. and with FBreader sometimes when I click to the next page it starts going through multiple pages till I hit the page back button.. then I have to find my place again.... Sorry got kinda off topic there.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I want it all: a great ebook reader, yes, but also the capability to listen to audiobooks without their being hundreds of megabytes long.

More than that, I want a text-to-speech capability (with voices I have purchased) that I can crank up on one of those ebooks I'm reading and listen to the book while I'm running errands. (Or saved web pages, or reports, or whatever is necessary. But you get the picture.)

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

There's a "Maemo" tab is preferences where you can enable a temporary fix for this bug.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Hundreds of megabytes? Seems a little over-the-top; 20 hours is only about 150 MB at 16kb/s. You could even go 8 kb/s.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Until they add support for Audible I see little value in this feature as my whole library of audiobooks is from Audible. I am not going to spend the time ripping a set of CD/DVD's and then re-encode them to whatever the fickle NIT is willing to support.

And I am not going to repurchase my content just for the NIT...it makes more sense to just use an MP3 player that already supports Audible as well as MP3 or other formats.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Well, then ask Audible to support the NIT's - it's not Nokia's fault that they don't support a proprietary file format/DRM scheme...

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

My preference remains ARM-WB (provided that its audio quality is good).

How large are all the files for a single big novel in Audible?

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Ken Follet "World Without End" 992 pages is 314 MB in Audible format.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I have hundreds of Audible books as well, from my six years as a fanatical member. They work great with Orb. Also, something like alt.binaries.audiobooks is an effective source. I don't care if the books are big; a few gigs of storage space go a long way.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I had some audible books a couple of years ago that I struggled to convert to mp3 (my player wasn't listed). Afterdawn.com had info I had a look and found this thread http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/23/103313
It provides info to convert aa format that you own to mp3 apparently converting a 5 and a half hour book in 10 minutes.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I converted some of my Audibles to mp3 by burning them to a virtual cd drive with Nero then ripping them to mp3. The only problem with Nero is that it only allows a couple virtual CD drives. I should have bought Alcohol 110% as it allows a full alphabet of virtual drives. The problem with ORB is that you have to have an internet conection. This is awkward in a car or walking to work. I really don't care how big an audiobook file is since I only listen to one book at a time and SD cards are cheap. Not being able to use my N800 to listen to books is a major disappointment.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Who says we can't play amr-wb ;).

I'm playing the art of war on my tablet right now, no ****. I promise. I'll release in a min.

BTW: I've done my good deed for the day, I don't even need AMR-WB :P

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

@RogerS

http://www.internettablettalk.com/fo...5&goto=newpost

For audiobooks, I plan on updating the gmplayer to list awb files so you can resume them back.

EDIT: I got gmplayer to list awb files but it is not worth it as I cannot figure out how to close mplayer cleanly and gmplauncher will not let me resume the awb file anyway.

So no resume, but you can play them at least :P

Yes, I know it isn't the Nokia's Audiobook Player but I guess that what the Open Source community is there for. And I didn't do this for personal gain too :) (I don't use audiobooks :P)

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

All right!

I can't wait to try this out this evening.

You're a prince, qwerty12!

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I tried the Afterdawn kit for converting .aa files and it didn't work for me.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Thanks!

Now I feel honoured :p :D

Unfortunately, I don't know how to get resume support and fast-forward seems to be broken. Not good but maybe you can create files with short times on them?

I've played the art of war using "mplayer /media/mmc1/The\ Art\ of\ War/artofwar_01_sun.awb"

Pressing space in console pauses, 0 brings up volume, / brings it down.

It seems stable :), most of my ports/fixes usually have problems >.<

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I would really like to use this on my relatively new 810 for news and information podcasts. I use something called mortplayer on my iPAQ (Windows Mobile). Never mind the format and saving a few megabytes - the bookmarking/resume feature is critical. I would also like to be able to have it speed up (without sounding like chipmonks) or slowdown with the touch of a button.

It looks like the executable is a .sis (for Symbian?) can this run on a 810? is there an emulator or something out there? One of the Nokia pages says it is compatible; another does not list it.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Hehe, I just saw the update, thanks! :)

If you really want a binary of the gmplauncher that shows amr files, I can post it up but it's pretty restricting. You cannot pause from it, you cannot change the mplayer volume ( setting volume from the top applet works though) , maemo comes up and says that it isn't responding (i find it best to leave this on the screen) and if you kill gmplauncher while a book is still playing, you have to "kiilall mplayer" anyway.

Still tempted? :p

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I'm not familiar with this program or that format.

But the Nokia Audiobook Manager program is free and converts .wav or .mp3 files to .amr files. (Windows only, I think.)

I converted a few audiobook files this evening, and they seem great. A podcast too.

I launched the MPlayer-AMR by double-clicking on the .amr book- file in File Manager. I could pause and resume, but it might be a pain with really long segments if you can't quit and then resume from the same spot later.

I've got a number of Khmer-language learning tapes (er, mp3's) that I'll try next. And, for practicality, I'll probably split them up into smaller pieces in Audacity first.

Not something I know. But I hope that whatever language it's written in, they were clever enough to think about using it in more than one place and can easily port it to our tablets.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Well, OK, you've convinced me. Anyway, I'm way better off now than I was just yesterday.

Thanks again!

Roger

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Actually yes it is...they would need to have licensed a player for the NIT's. Many of their phones play Audible so it is reasonable to assume whatever was required should have been done for the tablets, whether that be shoehorn in the needed support for the AA format or work the deal with Audible.

The mantra of "...well, then ask...{insert whoever here}...for an app for the tablets..." is as unproductive a reply as can be posted.

So I will retort with an equally banal response to research the issue before posting:

http://www.audible.com/adbl/store/de...&whichMfgr=177

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Size varies by the audio quality you want. There are 4 levels. Format 1 being the lowest quality up to format 4 which is at least 128kbps and i forget the other tech specs. My Creative Zen Xtra only supports format 4 so I am most familiar with those sizes. I would guess a book like Shantaram which is a bit over 43 hours takes up 618MB in format 4 and about 165MB in format 2. Format two is fine for almost any book but format 4 obviously sounds the richest.

I mention Shantaram because it is a burnable title and I forget the exact number of CD it takes but it's at least 30 CD's and I seem to recall it was more like 50. That is because the AA format is extremely compressed.

So uncompressing the AA files, even the lowest quality format 2 (not much is out there in format 1) results in BIG files. Sure you can resample them to reduce the size but even then you have big files to deal with.

And Audible has always seemed to try and support as many devices as possible. I do recall that SanDisk really botched on eof the series of MP3 players, the original "C" line I believe, (they released an modified version 2 of that line under the same name, but it's almost impossible to know which you are buying online so even though it's a great player as it supports SDHC ya gotta know for sure when buying) but the hardware simply could not support the Audible files. I would find it very disappointing to learn that is why there is no Audible support on the NIT's w/o some intermediary like Orb.

I mean it's fine since a smaller easier to manage device can be had for $30 and hold several long ebooks on just a 1gb Audible compatible player. But it sure would be nice if once in a while a person could use the tablet to play them too.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I actually agree, even my Garmin Nuvi has Audible support in it.

But Nokia don't really seem to care, like look at the current AMR-WB support. Nokia released a working package for S60 phones (but I guess it is easier as phones already support AMR) but nothing for us. Come on, Nokia, even I have managed to make 2 things which support AMR.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I poked around a little. It seems that an emulator is too complex and not likely to be practical.

Does Nokia read this forum? would they pick up on interest in an audio book reader for the tablet? How can we communicate with them? Maybe they can port the book player for us.

I poked around sourceforge and found an apparently old package (vintage 2006) with little recent activity called KABOOK. Any interest in looking at porting (maybe updating) this?

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I can't figure out how to untar this :P

They packed it stupidly.

I dunno, that's for mp3's. With my Media Player Package, you can play AMR-WB in the Media Player now. Lacking resume but everything else is perfect.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I just wanted to bump to say that the files to support inbuilt media player are released. Much recommend over mplayer as there is a gui, easy playlists, pause and resume support.

Same link as mplayer version.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Confused in several different ways here . . .

Do you mean that putting the 4 amr libraries in /usr/lib/ is sufficient for Media Player to play audio files in this format?

Because that seems to be what is happening on my N810.

Is there any need to install the mplayer-amr that you so fortuitously provided (other than one's preference for mplayer over Media Player)?

Um. How would you launch the mplayer-amr and select the audiobook you wanted? Double-clicking on the audiobook opens Media Player on my tablet.

As you can see, I'm confused. This is actually what happened yesterday — I listened to the Cory Doctorow podcast in Media Player without realizing it.

Roger

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Hmm, now I'm confused.

Installing mplayer amr shouldn't have affected the media player as media player wouldn't work with just those libraries on it's own.

Well, I provided mplayer as that is the first thing I thought of. But when I saw the limitations, I decided to do it for the media player.

I would still recommend installing the media player amr support as it provides proper gstreamer support (the media player backend) and shows the amr files in the library.

mplayer is a bad choice compared to media player for amr files.

But if you want to use mplayer:
"mplayer /path/to/awb" in a terminal.
If you didn't replace the mplayer already installed, then try mplayer-amr instead.

Also mplayer-amr and the media player support aren't dependent on each other.

Also, unless you chose it manually, file manager wouldn't have known what to do witth the file as none of the mimetypes would have matched.

If you wish to be sure of anything:

Download this:
http://www.mediafire.com/?jji5udocmj6
and save it to internal card and open terminal and "sudo gainroot"
and run
mv /media/mmc2/mplayer /usr/bin/mplayer-amr
chmod +x /usr/bin/mplayer-amr

Then to use that mplayer:
mplayer-amr /patch/to/awb/file

Then grab http://rapidshare.com/files/106591605/amr.tar.gz.html , save to internal card and open terminal and sudo gainroot.

mv /media/mmc2/amr.tar.gz /
cd /
tar zxvf amr.tar.gz
./installamr

So mediaplayer will be the default to open awb files. mplayer will only open amr from the command line, when you invoke it manually. media player is much better for awb files than mplayer

Best Regards.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Well, that makes sense to me. I don't know why Media Player plays the AMR file (which I gave a .amr extension to) when I double-click the filename in File Manager.

But it does. :-)

For your instinctive response and for tackling the issue a second time, I thank you.

I'm happy to follow your advice, but what you mean by "media player amr support" isn't clear to me.

I previously installed the libraries you pointed to (in /usr/lib) and the mplayer-amr files (made executable and put in /usr/bin).

The second download you reference:

http://rapidshare.com/files/106591605/amr.tar.gz.html

looks to be different from the file with the libraries so I'll follow your instructions. If you mean something different by "media player amr support" please advise me.


Sounds good to me.

I'll report back whatever I learn.

Thanks again,

Roger

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Ah! I thought you were using the awb extension which the files of the nokia site come in.

:)

I mean the file of rapidshare :) . Sorry for being confusing.
Sounds right :)
That is the media player amr support as you said :)
If you install the "media player amr support" which is the file from rs., you should have no problems with awb files in the media player.
Best Regards and hope you get it fully working :) btw my replies are slow to make as I am on tablet :(/:) :p

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

@RogerS

I know what's wrong! Media Player already supports amr and awb out of the box! I just saw my testing files on a clean reflash. That means my package isn't needed, off to edit my post and sorry for doubting you, nokia.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

It has always seemed to me that Audible is vehemently anti-Linux. It also seemed to me after being their loyal customer for six years that they were one of the least responsive companies I have ever dealt with.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I wonder what the future holds for Audible now that they have been bought by Amazon. They will probably change their format to something that will only play on a Kindle.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

I guess I wasn't paying attention here. The file indeed came with a .awb extension and I left it that way when I shortened the rest of the name.

But I guess the big news is the responsiveness this issue showed:

Not only did you modify two programs immediately on learning of the request, but Nokia managed to implement the fix before I asked for it.

You couldn't ask for more than that, I think. :-)

Roger

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Audible .aa files are wrapped in DRM so they are not about to let it play on just any old handheld device, especially those that are linux based.

However, you can convert the Audible .aa files to .mp3 and listen at will. I don't like Audible's policies, but they truly have the best audiobook collection on the web.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

OK, I'm with you this far.

I've written Audible about this and also asked Audible who at Nokia could be contacted about it.

I don't follow you here.

Are you saying Audible provides a way to convert .aa files to .mp3?

Or are you saying there are plenty of legal apps that will convert them?

Or are you saying it's easy to get ahold of some app that will convert .aa files, although the DMCA may come into play for U.S. residents?

As my prior remarks make clear, I've been operating under the assumption that I wouldn't be able to play my own Audible files except on an Audible-licensed mp3 player and moreover that such license actually provides the mp3 player with the .aa codec and doesn't actually make an mp3 file.

If you can correct any false part(s) of that assumption, I'd be grateful.

Thanks,

Roger

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

There are apps that can convert .aa to .mp3, thus removing all the DRM, but depending on your residence they may or may not violate copyright or DMCA laws. Personally, I think it's pretty ridiculous that you are paying for those audiobooks, or anything with DRM, as if you are buying it, but you are only renting it. Just my two cents.

Re: Nokia Audiobooks: what we need to hear
 

Audible allows you to burn your files to CD. This removes the DRM. You can then do what you like with them. It is not necessary to burn them to actual physical cd's. Just set up virtual drives and burn to them. It is time consuming, but it works.