This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 at 5:57 pm and is filed under Donaldson, FATAL REVENANT, LORD FOUL'S BANE, Scott Brick Presents projects, Tech stuff, Thomas Covenant, iTunes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hey, everyone, I wanted to let you know about the workaround to a small but annoying situation we’ve discovered, and to ask your advice if you have any wisdom on this issue.
It seems that when you drag the MP3 files for FATAL REVENANT or LORD FOUL’S BANE into iTunes, the Apple software chops off the file names and leaves you with a bunch of files named “Chronicle” instead of the full title and part numbers.
The solution for now? In iTunes, on the File menu, use the Import function to select all the files from your desktop and bring them into iTunes.
We have several different groups of people investigating what’s causing the situation, and hope to have it fixed shortly. But for now, Import yes, drag no.
And if any tech types are out there, feel free to shoot me an e-mail (scott@scottbrickpresents.com) or post a comment below to point us in the right direction. I know in the big scheme of things this is a dust mote, but we want to give you the best, easiest, most enjoyable experience possible.
Sorry for the inconvenience,
Scott
May 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
[…] iTunes Audiobook Glitch Means You Have to Import Files, not Drag Them […]
May 9th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
I’d have to look at the tracks to really investigate, but my bet would be that (if it’s not just a bug in iTunes) it’s a combination of iTunes settings, and the metadata embedded in the MP3 tracks.
A couple of settings in Preferences > Advanced tell iTunes that it’s OK to manipulate certain things about tracks it is bringing in. Possibly that’s affecting things.
But more likely, what MP3 meta data is embedded in the tracks? The ID3 tags are, I believe, respected by iTunes in all circumstances. Certainly, dragging in MP3 music downloaded from Amazon has worked as expected, with Name, Album, Artist and so on all correctly populated, in the last month or so (i.e., current version of iTunes).
There are MP3 ID3 tag editing tools for both Mac and Windows, so perhaps you could check the tracks out that way…? I’d recommend verifying tracks downloaded from the store, so that you’re examining exactly what customers are getting. HTH!
May 14th, 2008 at 11:46 am
Weird. I can’t reproduce the problem in iTunes, but it sounds like the ID3 tags are set up properly. The “Name” field in iTunes (”Title” in Windows) should display info from the ID3 tag, not the filename, unless the ID3 tag is missing. (”Name” is essentially equivalent to “Track Name.”)
I know that doesn’t exactly answer your question, but it might be a workaround.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:25 am
I just bought Fatal Revanent and dragged it into iTunes without a problem. The ID3 tag, however were all sorts of screwed up!
I cleaned them all up and managed to get them working. I also converted all the tracks to standard iPod audiobook aac files (m4b), so I can bookmark them and play them at faster speed.
If you want them I can provide them for you to sell.