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Converting .aa files to mp3's
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bratcher
Senior Member
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21. August 2005 @ 09:16 |
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Another idea is to burn the books (in Audiblemanager) to CD's then rip the burned CD's into mp3 files. I'm sure thats how Audible books wind up un the audio book usenet newsgroups.
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jadoglio
Newbie
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21. August 2005 @ 09:24 |
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Good idea but my experience using the Audibles program to burn those disks will means it will probably take you the rest of your life. GoldWave and MP3PO is the best way to do it so far. Good Luck
JADO
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bratcher
Senior Member
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21. August 2005 @ 11:57 |
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You either have a very slow CD burner (my first one was 4x) or you don't have DMA enabled for the burner.
I have burned Audible CD's at 32x although I now burn all audio (even from music & book mp3's) at 16x. Still fast enough for me! My DVD burner will do CD's at 40x & my CD burner will do them at 52x but I have no need for those higher speeds.
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nerys
Junior Member
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21. August 2005 @ 14:26 |
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I think you misunderstood by design limitation cd can only hold 90 minutes worth of audio (80minutes for standard consumer discs)
there is a way to put 180 minutes (160 consumer) on a disc but it requires software editing to use the left and right channels for each "track" to double the time on the disc and THEN it will only work in walkman style players where you can RIG sdaptors to play on the left or right channels to both outputs.
so lets assume 80 minutes per disc. my audio book is 13 hours long. do the math.
dont matter how fast your burner is thats a LOT of discs and lead in and lead out times still take a long time plus disc swaping plus reripping recompressing etc.. etc.. etc.. no thanks.
FYI that 13 hour book would require a MINIMUM of 10 CD's and thats a SMALL audio book I have many over 20 and 30 hours long.
its simple people install goldware drag and drop the aa file into goldwave wait for it to deflash and save. done
the only ones that give me trouble are the few SHORT oness I have (I am going to try that push the forward button trick never thought of that)
Chris Taylor
http://www.nerys.com/
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Imemine
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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21. August 2005 @ 18:38 |
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yes I do the same thing but Audible has an automatic book mark on files so you can pick up where you left off, using any device. So if you don't delete that file that marks it, your mp3 files will not always start at the beginning
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jadoglio
Newbie
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21. August 2005 @ 20:04 |
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i have a DVD burner that writes CD's at 32X. Not sure if DMA is enables or not butr using the CD burining software included in Audible Manager as close as I could tell it was burning at abou 2X.
JADO
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Imemine
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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21. August 2005 @ 20:22 |
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everytime I try to burn a cd using audibles burner nothing comes out correctly and some of the book is missing
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jordanpp
Newbie
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22. August 2005 @ 06:08 |
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Hi there,
for splitting the mp3 files I had ggod experience with
MP3 Splitter & Joiner 2.9, Its not free -19.95 USD but it has a really good user interface :)
Jordan
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cooties
Newbie
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22. August 2005 @ 20:34 |
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Imemine - might have figured out why I don't have that problem - I always listen to the beginning to make sure that I got it, and then forward the slider to the very end and listen to the last minute or two to verify that it's complete, and THEN I go do the process as I outlined above...perhaps listening to the end of the file clears out the memory?...hmmm...couldn't hurt - trying that yourself might keep you from having to hack all around your computer to deal with the pesky little file...
-c
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ccbaluba
Newbie
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23. August 2005 @ 15:01 |
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I have read a good amount of this thread, but forgive me if I'm asking something that has already been asked. I am on a Mac. And both goldwave and the "river - something or rather" software seem only to work with PC's. Are there any solutions for converting .aa files to .mp3 files on a mac that anyone knows of? I read someone had a solution with an older version of iTunes...but I have a tendancy to keep mine updated. Ooops... Any other suggestions?
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AfterDawn Addict
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23. August 2005 @ 17:45 |
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Nope, I'm pretty sure you need a real computer, not a mac to since there is virtually no software out there for it.
Just wanted to mention about the burning length of CDs from above, they do make 90 minutes, 800MB CDRs. They used to make 99 minutes ones as well, but I haven't been able to find them in a few years. You can find the 90 min ones at allmediaoutlet.com
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Imemine
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23. August 2005 @ 18:05 |
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I've been doing a few test on what bitrate sounds the best and the size of the files. audible files are so small and when you convert them they grow so large. I usually do 96, but today I've done the same file 3 times in 96, 64, 56. between the 96 (244,886 kb) and 64 it dropped the file size 81,628 kb to 163,258.. the 56 only took the size down to 142,850. I've already listened to the quality between the 96 and 64 mono and I dont hear a difference. I think I will use the 64 bitrate.
any one else have any thoughts on this.
Marilene
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stoneweed
Newbie
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23. August 2005 @ 18:56 |
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Once you convert them to .mp3 files, do you have iTunes convert to AAC files so that they can be bookmarked while you are listening to them?
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Imemine
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23. August 2005 @ 19:20 |
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Actually I put them on my muvo and it bookmarks them at any point which I stop.
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cooties
Newbie
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23. August 2005 @ 19:46 |
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ccbaluba:
I know nothing about macs, but I think there's something called a "windows emulator" (google it) that might be able to help you out with programs that won't work on mac...??? But something tells me that would take up WAY too many resources to do that - might just be cheaper to get a 5 year old used win 98 or 2000 PC (2000 is preferable - more stable than 98) - seems like "obsolete" desktop PCs cost less than audio manipulation software titles nowadays...probably even less than an iPod...my HP Pavilion 9780c came with a cd burner and a dvd player, ethernet port, and all the other garbage that was "state of the art" in 2000, and I betcha I couldn't get more than 100 bucks for it now...INCLUDING the monitor!...luckily, it still does what I need it to do, at least for another year.
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Imemine
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26. August 2005 @ 07:51 |
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Anyone know of a program that will compress mp3 files (say 96 bitrate)to the size of audible files? There has to be one out there that will make them nice and small.
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onesys
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26. August 2005 @ 08:14 |
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What you do is open them in Goldwave or similar application and save them out at a lower bitrate. 40 is ok for audible books with a sample rate of 11500 will give you quite small yet acceptable quality files.
Try mp3po Pro! Makes splitting mp3's for audio books a snap!
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Imemine
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28. August 2005 @ 10:07 |
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ok 40 bitrate. but another question came up. What format do I download from audible? Usually I get the #3. Should I go for the 1 and then convert to 40 bitrate?
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onesys
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28. August 2005 @ 11:18 |
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Iminem,
I would recommend you start with type 4 if you can afford the bandwidth, because then you have a good base to start whitling down from. Start lower and 40 may not do it.It's a copy of a copy, and you want to start with as early a generation as you can. After the conversion, just kill the aa files.
Try mp3po Pro! Makes splitting mp3's for audio books a snap!
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vejalink
Newbie
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2. September 2005 @ 14:57 |
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This post is for anyone who might be having trouble using GraphEdit and getting the register.bat file to work.
First of all, you can download GraphEdit at the following sites:
http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/downloads/showsoftware_graphedi...
or
http://www.videohelp.com/tools?tool=GraphEdit
The stokebloke site mentioned in some of the forum posts doesn't seem to have this program anymore.
I tried to use the other programs (GoldWave and River Past) suggested on this and other forums for converting .aa files to mp3, but they didn't work for me. With GoldWave I was never able to open my Audible file. It would freeze at 48% every time. I tried everything to find a solution, but nothing worked. Some people say that this method works only on some computers; perhaps this is the case with mine, or perhaps I couldn't get the proper version of either this or Audible Manager. Anyway, I also tried River Past but couldn't even get the program to open on my computer. (I downloaded all of the necessary software that it requires as well.) I was unable to find the older version of River Past anyway; all of the links listed on this forum either went to the new version or didn't work, so perhaps the older versions have been made unavailable. Also, I really didn't want to have to pay for a program to do this since I seldom need this kind of software.
My only hope was to try GraphEdit, which sounded like a little bit of a pain, but it's free, and it's better than playing my audio book for nine hours while capturing the sound. I read the instructions for GraphEdit posted here and on other forums and successfully downloaded and extracted the files. However, I ran into trouble when I tried to run register.bat.
When I double clicked on register.bat, the screen displayed a bunch of bad command error messages. I read a few comments on different forums from people who had this problem, and I couldn't find any solutions. The only suggestion I saw was something about manually typing in the path name for the regsvr32.exe file before each batch command, but it didn't explain how to do this exactly. Not knowing much about this subject, I was just about to give up on it, but I finally figured out a way to get it to work. There might be an easier way, but I don't know much about solving these sorts of problems, and this worked.
You have to find the regsvr32.exe file (probably in C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\). Instead of doing a batch registration of the DirectShow filters (which is what register.bat does), you can register the filter files manually by using Windows Explorer and going to the folder where the GraphEdit files are saved. (You will know which files they are if you try to run register.bat and get the error message because the file names are displayed on the screen.) When you try to open one, a window comes up asking which program you would like to use to open it. Browse to the regsvr32.exe location and open with that. There is a box you can check to tell it to always open this file with this program, and when I did this, the icons for all of the other filter files had changed. You have to open each of them to register it. Then you can run GraphEdit, and the appropriate filters will be displayed in the Graph--Insert Filters menu. By the way, the wav file I made was not quite as big as the posted guide for using GraphEdit would indicate; mine was 496 MB for a nine-hour book.
Disclaimer: The reason I wanted to convert .aa files is that I bought an audio book from Audible to give to someone as a gift, and I wanted to burn it to CD. However, my CD burner is not recognized by Audible, so I couldn't do it. I used GraphEdit to convert it to a wav file so that I could then convert it to mp3. My purpose is not to distribute illegal copies but only to transfer what I legitimately purchased to CD once and then to delete the book from my computer. Unfortunately, Audible, by not letting us convert their files to other formats, not letting us burn CDs unless we have an approved CD burner, and pressuring anyone who makes audio converters not to convert their files, has forced those of us who want to follow the rules to find ways to get around them. I didn't want to waste the money that I spent with Audible, so this was my only option.
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 7. September 2005 @ 22:06
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tottiek2
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3. September 2005 @ 14:57 |
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Hey there,
I found this entire thread incredibly helpful, but now I can't find the 5.0 version of river past anywhere. All the links listed are either no longer available, or link you to the latest version. I also tried cheetah, but the software does not recognize the format. I've done numberous searches with no luck. Please help...I'm trying to convert the audible files to mp3 so that I can listen in the car without having to burn 30 cds.
Thanks
-T
This message has been edited since posting. Last time this message was edited on 3. September 2005 @ 14:58
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Imemine
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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3. September 2005 @ 16:41 |
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just use goldwave. it works best.
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onesys
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3. September 2005 @ 17:21 |
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This bears repeating. It's not Goldwave or riverpast that is important. Both of them depend on the codec from audible that allows you to listen in Windows Media Player. Neither of these or any other program will work without the codec. Also, the codec is encoded from audible to only allow you to open your own aa files, not some from someone else, so you can forget that thought right now.
Try mp3po Pro! Makes splitting mp3's for audio books a snap!
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Imemine
Suspended due to non-functional email address
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3. September 2005 @ 17:32 |
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Yep, He's right. CAn't do it without audible
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tottiek2
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3. September 2005 @ 17:40 |
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Oh Humph...Looks to be the case. Thanks everybody! =o)
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