Just wanted to hear how some of you rip/encode/tag/listen to audiobooks on your empeg. I've got the 46 CD Lord of the Rings set and the 13 CD Sillmerillion set and I want to have them in my car. Do you rip them as a bunch of little tracks like they are on the CD or as one big one? What encoding rate do you use? How do you tag them? I'd like a way that would preserve chapter titles and divisions, but that seems to be a lot of work. Any ideas?

Oh, and yes, I have read LOTR, finishing my 5th reading of it in fact. I've only read maybe a 3rd of the Sillmerillion.

Yeah, that set is a lot of work! With audio books I usually treat the entire book as one CD, but with many individual tracks. It takes a lot of time and effort to do it this way (since you'll get different tags each time you put in a different CD), but it makes it easier to find your place if your bookmarks get erased somehow. As for how I actually tag: I do something like this:

Title: Book 1, Chapter I- A Long Expected Party, Part 01
Source: The Fellowship of the Ring
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

I'm not sure this is the best format, but it's consistent. It took me a couple of hours to get the whole 46 CD set correct and in order though. The only thing I regret is that the reader isn't in the tag information, but I suppose that's the way it goes. I have the same problem with classical music.

BTW, the thing I hate about this set is that the reader starts off each CD with "The Fellowship of the Rin, CD X", which stinks for an mp3 player. The Harry Potter books don't do that. I know I could fix the tracks, but that's more work and I'm tired of messing with a set I'll listen to very infrequenly.

Also, for some reason I just don't like to listen to this set while driving. I don't know if it's the reader or just that Tolkien isn't meant for driving, but I find it difficult to concentrate (not a problem I have reading the books, though).

Also, for some reason I just don't like to listen to this set while driving. I don't know if it's the reader or just that Tolkien isn't meant for driving, but I find it difficult to concentrate (not a problem I have reading the books, though).

You've got to think it was just an oversight that the recent UK law banning the use of mobile phones while driving failed to mention anything about listening to audio-books of The Silmarillion -- I know which I'd find more distracting.

Peter

I typically rip with VBR, lowest quality setting, mono, in AudioGrabber - typically averages around 60-65kbps. I name them like BookTitle - CDxx - TrackNo - TrackTitle, each CD in its own folder (Author/Booktitle - CDxx/).

Then drop all the files in one folder (Author/BookTitle/), start up Tag & Rename which with the naming scheme above gets the files in proper order internally. AutoNumber the tracks, if neccessary (more than 100 tracks) Format to 0xx. Then I do a pass that sets the Album tag for all tracks (from the rip there's a CDxx in there as well) and also the Year.
Then I set the the file name based on the tags to Author - Booktitle - Chapter - TrackNo
For books without chapter names or clear chapter <-> track_no association I use "Chapter xx" where xx corresponds to the track number. Might not be the most correct, but is pretty handy... If there's no proper chapter names, then I do a final pass that sets the Track tag to "Chapter xx" based on the file name...

Might all sound very elaborate, but after the move to a single folder step is done, it's about 2 minutes or less (all the required patterns are predefined inside Tag & Rename) until the files are properly tagged & named...

Edit: If there's a specific track first on the CD where they say "Booktitle, CDx" or something like that, that track doesn't get ripped...

/Michael