Splasm Software Discussions

I have just ripped a set of CDs for a book using ABB. 4 of the chapters (there is one chapter per CD) ended up missing the last 10 plus minutes of audio. They just had no sound but ran for the appropriate time. I re-ripped one CD and the new version had the missing 10 minutes so it must be something in the ripping process. I later found that three other CDs were missing the tail end of the rip. Any suggestions?

Other than this, ABB fits a hole beautifully. Thanks.

I guess I should note:
ABB 1.0.7
Mac OS X 10.4
TiBook (1GHz)

Could you tell us how you discovered the last ten minutes were silent - in iTunes, QuickTime Player, on your iPod?

Do you still have the Audiobook Builder Project with the original CD rips intact? If so, you can browse the package contents of that Project document in the Finder (just right-click on the document and select "Show Package Contents"), listening to the last ten minutes of each file to see if the original rips exhibit the issue. If they don't, the root cause is somewhere else in Audiobook Builder's build process. I'd lean toward the latter to be the case because the actual rip is a fairly straightforward QuickTime export from the original file(s) on CD while, for its part, Audiobook Builder does a lot of extracurricular activity to produce actual working Audiobook files. I would suspect our code before Apple's.

Would you be willing to send us the misbehaving Audiobook so we can examine the file structure? It'll be far too large for email but you could send it through a file transfer service such as http://fileho.com or even send it through iChat. If you'd like to do it through iChat please email us at support@splasm.com with your screen name and we'll contact you shortly.

_________________
Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

I discovered the missing audio while I was listening on my Nano (1st gen). I went back to iTunes to verify the audio was in fact missing. It is. I also listened to the individual files and the audio is missing in them as well. I then went back and did a quick listen of the CDs for the files that were missing the audio. The CDs are good. Actually, in the first file, it is about 10 minutes but the last two files are missing 30 to 40 minutes.

I have a sample in a project file I can send you but it will have to wait until I get home as work doesn't allow FTP or iChat.

Thanks for the quick response.

Just to keep everyone in the loop: hoogie69's checking into numerous CD read errors we found in their system.log that may be related to this issue.

_________________
Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

Mea culpa, I should have posted more info as it happened.

What is happening is that it appears that my CD/DVD drive is recording a high number of errors while reading the CDs. As Keith indicated to me, this could be a bad CD or potentially a bad drive. I just replaced the drive in March so am in touch w/ OWC regarding the potential bad drive but am currently looking at the CDs as the culprit. I have since ripped a different 21-disk book w/o error and in looking at the CDs for the book that was giving me headaches, see that they are pretty well chewed up.

At this point, I think I will keep an eye on the CDs I get from the Library. The drive may also just be much more sensitive to damaged CDs.

Thanks for your help Keith.