Book Acela now - Amtrak.comHow to create audiobooks in iTunes
iTunes 8 has made it easier to classify any audio file as an audiobook, allowing you to resume playback, control playback speed, and prevent your books from popping up on music playlists.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Digital audiobooks come in all shapes and sizes. You can purchase them online from sites like Audible, eMusic, and iTunes. You can download free audiobooks from places like Archive.org. Or, you can rip audiobooks to your computer from CD. Unfortunately, no matter where your digital audiobooks come from, getting iTunes and your iPod to treat them as an audiobook--not some random playlist of songs--can be a struggle.
If you've ever purchased an audiobook through iTunes, you may have noticed that the file appears in a separate audiobook tab in your media library. Keeping your audiobooks separate from your music library not only makes them easier to find, but it also prevents chapters of Crime and Punishment from popping up in a party music playlist.
iTunes even treats the playback of audiobooks differently than music playback, allowing you to adjust the playback speed of the file and automatically resume any previously played chapter where it left off instead of starting at the beginning.
You don't have to purchase your audiobooks from Apple to get the special iTunes audiobook treatment. By tweaking a few settings, you can make iTunes and your iPod recognize any audio file or group of audio files as an audiobook. To find out how, take a look at our step-by-step guide to creating audiobooks in iTunes.
Editors' note: This tutorial requires Tunes 8.0.1 or higher.
Donald Bell is CNET Reviews' senior editor for MP3 players and portable audio, and one half of the MP3 Insider blog and weekly podcast. He also likes getting his hands dirty with digital audio tools for musicians and DJs.
Donald Bell is an electronic musician, a veteran record store employee, and a fearless hardware hacker. He's also CNET's Senior Editor for MP3 and digital audio.
Jasmine France is CNET's resident digital audio doyenne, writing and editing product reviews, crave blogs, and feature stories on all things MP3. And if you need advice on headphones, she's your girl.
What you need to do next is select (or highlight) all of the songs. If you didn't or only did one, you won't be able to join the tracks, since you need to have more than 1 track to join. Select the first one, the #1 track, by clicking on it, but don't double click. You don't want to play it. Then press the shift key, and select the last track. All of the tracks should now be highlighted. They will all be in blue. Go to the advanced menu, and you should see that "join cd tracks" is no longer greyed out.
Sorry it took me so long to answer. I usually don't monitor my comments.
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by kings9111
April 13, 2009 4:53 AM PDT
- Make sure that the column above the track numbers has been selected even if the numbers are in ascending order. This fixed my "graying out " problem :)
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