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 Post subject: How to proceed
PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 5:19 am 
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How to proceed.. I like the idea of High, Medium and Low stereo and mono presets and would like to see a warning in the application when setting to mono.. I think a note in the README would be ignored or forgotten. A dialog with a warning (and a "Don't show warning in the future" checkbox on the dialog) would seem appropriate.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:40 am 
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No joy. I've begun ripping my cd's using the stereo sound output & this morning I had the exact same problem as before. I was listening to Brad Meltzer's Book of Fate. Somewhere between 1.27.08 & 1.27.10, the audiobook skipped to the next audiobook in my audiobooks folder. This was from a CD that I had not yet put into itunes, so the data is completely fresh.

As I recall, I synced my ipod last night. I started to listen to Book of Fate last night. I MAY have listened to a podcas, thought I can't remember doing so. I converted a few more books on CD to audiobooks, so I resynced my ipod. Everything was fine. This AM, I listened to Book of Fate on my drive in to work, for approx. 15 minutes. The only thing I used my ipod for after that was to look up an event in my calendar. Then on the way home, I continued listening to Book of Fate. I listened for approx 5 minutes & the skip/jump occured. If you need me to send you the new file, I'll leave ichat open.


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PostPosted: Sat Nov 18, 2006 9:51 am 
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1.27.08 .. curious.. that is half of the time it takes for a mono book to (I) 'skip and jump' (I like to press wild flowers... oke enough of that.. monty python)

So..
- It has something to do with the time at which it starts occurring. (because it also happens when the book is beyond that point.)
- Stereo seems to bug out twice as fast as mono, coincidence? I think not.
- It has nothing to do with what you did before it jumped (well I think letting either the iPod sleep or play anything and then go back to the book might cause it, it does not only happen if you played a podcast in between)
-

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 11:46 am 
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Just a bump to let you guys know we're still looking into this issue.

Our tests show the iPod does return to the main menu when playing Mark's most recent sample file. The file is 12 hours in length, encoded at 64Kbps, 22.05kHz, stereo. The issue is very easy to duplicate with Mark's file by pausing at 1:38:44, playing a Podcast for a few seconds, pausing and playing Mark's file again. It reliably fails at 1:39:02.

Since we received Mark's file we followed through on a couple of hunches about the ftyp and stik atom values in the moov header - neither panned out. So we created a test file to match Mark's in audio configuration (64Kbps/22.05kHz/stereo) and length and verified it also exhibits the same symptoms. Like Mark's file our 12-hour test fails at 1:39:02 after pausing at 1:38:44. Interestingly, a 4-hour file at the same audio configuration (64Kbps/22.05kHz/stereo) does not fail in the same way at the same point in the 12-hour file. The 4-hour test keeps trucking - and we haven't seen it fail at all yet. Also, several reports in our research indicate 5 hours is the max for reliable bookmarks. We'll test 5-hour output soon.


153957:

We haven't seen a pattern that indicates stereo fails sooner than mono. Have you?

While the issue is not exclusively caused by interacting with Podcasts, the play Audiobook/pause Audiobook/play Podcast/pause Podcast/play Audiobook method is the most efficient way we've found to duplicate the issue. Any time we can save while testing for this issue is a good thing :).

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 12:07 pm 
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keithg wrote:
153957:

We haven't seen a pattern that indicates stereo fails sooner than mono. Have you?


well if the stereo's fail at about 1:30 and the mono's at 3:00.. it would seem like the stereo is at half the time of the mono, and mono has one channel, stereo two.... seemed reasonable..

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:38 pm 
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I see how that could steer a train of thought.

We haven't intentionally tried to get things to fail at progressively later times yet. And, we haven't tested enough to say whether the times where we've seen failures are pertinent or just coincidence. Right now the times tend to be closer to the beginning of the file because our in-house Audiobook tests use 1-minute Chapters and scrubbing becomes progressively slower as the number of Chapters increases. We let up somewhere after the first hour and roll with it.

Considering mono vs. stereo, I just tested two 12-hour files, one in mono and the other in stereo. I paused both at 22:52. In two passes, the stereo file failed at 23:44 and 23:45, while the mono file failed at 24:33 both times. I then paused at 1:38:44, as in our other tests. We already know the stereo file fails at 1:39:02. The mono file failed at 1:41:00. From these results I would say the time it takes to fail after pausing seems to be, and could be, affected by mono vs. stereo, with mono failing after stereo, but I don't think we've established that mono or stereo affects the point in the file after which bookmarks will fail.

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PostPosted: Sat Nov 25, 2006 10:34 am 
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Don't know if it matters, but the file crapped out again today & I thought to record the time, just in case. The file has probably failed 4 times or so, but it has also worked once that I can remember, under the same circumstances, where it didn't crap out. Anyways FWIW, this past time it failed somewhere btween 8.58.50 & 8.58.56


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:48 am 
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So, what´s this all about? I´m simply very disappointed. All my files crash - listening to any audiobook, than going away, listening to music or whatever, coming back to the audiobook - the file will crash, always. And that´s, what the programm mostly is about, isn´t it: Starting over from the latest bookmark!? And this feature just doesn´t work. Or just waking up the iPod after a while not using it - same effect. Is there any chance to fix this? Otherwise the programm is useless in my eyes an not worth only one cent.


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:51 pm 
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The exact cause of the issue is, as yet, not known. Over the last two years, before Audiobook Builder came to be, iPod users have reported experiencing the issue with at least some iTunes Store Audiobooks (including some of the Harry Potter series), some Audible.com Audiobooks and some "homemade" Audiobooks. We now know it affects at least some Audiobook Builder Audiobooks. It seems to manifest reliably with test files of four hours in length, mono or stereo, with recent tests showing that it's hit or miss with back to back tests on files of 3 hours or less. We have not received reports of this issue from more than a handful of users. The evidence we've gathered simply points to an issue with the way the iPod handles Audiobooks in general.

We know this is very important to many of our users but we ask you, in turn, to understand the issue is not directly caused by Audiobook Builder. We intend to discuss the issue with Apple as soon as we feel we have enough information to proceed. If there's a way to make Audiobooks work properly every time on every iPod we will find it.

We want you to enjoy Audiobook Builder but if you will not use it because of this issue then you're welcome to return your registration for a full refund with no additional obligation on your part. If you could at least take a moment to provide your iPod specs and the length, data rate, channel configuration and sample frequency (ie. iPod nano 2GB, 3 hours 27 minutes, 64Kbps, mono, 32kHz) of your failing Audiobooks we would truly appreciate your help.

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PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:28 am 
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Just to add another data point:I also get this issue, with AB generated files but also with others as well, on a 5G video (60 GB). For some books, it's 100% guaranteed to happen when the book's past some point and after waking the iPod from sleep (i.e. listen on the way to work, put iPod in bag; head home, take iPod out, listen ~30s - boom).

I have possibly noticed it occurs as the iPod is buffering the book, with the disk still spinning when it crashes. I wonder if it's having trouble reading from disk and playing at the same time. Does this problem happen with flash-based ipods?

My previous iPod (3G) also had the same or very similar problem, and that one also crapped out on some music tracks too. Most of my audibooks are mono.

In my view, this has nothing specifically to do with AB: it's simply that the iPod does not seem to have a very robust decoder, and can't handle some unusual situations - it more or less crashes and thus doesn't get a chance to update an audiobook bookmark. I'd love Apple to fix this, but I'm not holding my breath...

Rgds,
Ben


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PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:58 am 
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And to add to the conversation/pool of knowledge. This also happens on audiobooks that are recorded by ABB using 64kbps & stereo recording. I just had it happen again last night on the first book that I've listened to that was ripped this way.


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 Post subject: flash based players.
PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2006 7:46 pm 
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I think that AF may be on to something. I am having trouble with almost all of the audiobooks that I've made with ABB. Even changing the audio setting to 64 kbps & stereo sound hasn't helped. I have a file here (Killer Instinct by Joseph finder) Part 1 is 11 hours & something long. Some symptoms as I've reported on other books before. If I play the file, then play a podcast or something & then go back, the file locks up & the ipod goes back to the main screen. When I got home from work today, I loaded the file onto my ipod nano (flash based ipod) along with a few podcasts. I then played the file on my video ipod. I started @ 4.58.45. I played it for approx 1 minute. Then I played 2 1-minute long podcasts. Then I went back to Killer instinct. It died somewhere around 5.00.00. I then turned on my ipod nano. I listened to approx. 1 minute of Killer instinct, then I jumped over to my podcasts & listened to 2 90 second podcasts. Then I went back to Killer instinct & the file is playing fine. It is now at 5.04.33 & doesn't seem like it will crash. Perhaps the problem does have something to do with the hard drive spinning up.

Anyways, this is hardly a scientific experiment, but it does seem to indicate that the nanos may be immune to the Audiobook lockups.


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PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2006 12:31 am 
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We've received two reports via email from nano users :(.

We're still testing - our latest results show the new iPod 1.2.1 firmware seems to make the issue less predictable. We've also confined our most recent tests to QuickTime Player output rather than Audiobook Builder output. Under firmware 1.2 we saw M4A files set to bookmarkable in iTunes exhibit the same issue but haven't been able to duplicate those results with 1.2.1. We'll keep everyone up to date as we learn more.

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 9:32 am 
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I have been consistently getting this premature-ending / bookmark deletion on all of my ABB-produced files and I have a 1G nano. I have a number of books from audible that have no issues at all, but seeing as how it's a different format, I don't find that surprising at all. I did, however, convert a 20 hour mp3 of The Da Vinci code to m4b by hand, and while the time meter registered 345 hours (or something like it) for the file length, the bookmarking worked perfectly.

I find that, in general, the bookmarking issue only appears for me when I stop listening to an ABB file and listen to some music, and then go back to listening to a previously bookmarked AB. If I simply pause and sleep the iPod, and then resume directly, there is no issue.


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 Post subject: recent developments
PostPosted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 4:25 pm 
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Just wanted to post something that may/may not be relevant. My wife wanted to play zuma on the video ipod, so I took the ipod mini on a trip yesterday. I had some podcasts on there, as well as 4 audiobooks I ripped using ABB (64 kbs/ stereo, etc)

I had zero problems with the ABB files. I haven't used them yet on my video ipod, but I did use them in ways that have caused the video ipod to reset when playing the ABB files (Listen then switch to some podcasts, then back)

Don't know if this helps isolate the problem or not, but I wanted to mention it.


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