How do I tag an mp3 file for audiobooks

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Clip | Sansa® Clip+
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I use my Clip+ to download and listen to audiobooks from the Overdrive libraray. Periodically some of the books will download properly but when I transfer them to the player (using a Mac) they get placed in the Music/Audiobooks/Unknown file. Today I downloaded 2 books and they both ended up there with the files alternating.

I tried renaming the files with 01 sequence but it had no effect. I tried moving the book folder to Podcasts, no change. I have tried moving the book folder out of Audiobooks entirely, no change. I check the files in Finder and as far as I can tell they all have the same information, so I don’t understand where or what tagging info I am looking for. Is it available in Finder? In Get Info?

I have searched the forums for an answer to this question and all of the answers seem to lead back to “retag the files.” I honestly don’t know what this entails or how to do it. All of the answers presume a familiarity with the process which I do not have.

Can someone please provide an ■■■■■’s Guide to doing this? Picture me a toddler who is given the keys to the car and told to put air in the tires - Step one, Open the car door, step two, put the key in the ignition. What’s an ignition? I ask.

Many Thanks, and please no snide remarks, I have been using computers for 20 years and am on my 5th player, own an ipad and an iphone and know how to use them so don’t presume I am a complete ■■■■■. I do know what tagging is as I have used it when listing Etsy products.

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Unless you scroll down Music and go to Folders, the Sansa reads ID3 tags, not filenames. ID3 tags are the electronic labels in the file that name Album, Artist, Track  and, most importantly for you, Genre  (Audiobooks).

In iTunes you can look at Get Info. That tells you what is in the tags

You could fix them one by one with Get Info. That would be tedious.

So take them off the Sansa and fix them on the computer.

Since you are in Mac land you should probably get kid3, a free tag editor.

http://kid3.sourceforge.net/

Install it, open it, go to Settings  and Configure Kid3.   You only need to do this once.  Under Tags you’ll see Tag 1 and Tag 2 tabs. Open each one and choose ISO-8859-1 for text encoding. That’s Windows text display, different from Apple. Also choose ID3 version 2.3. Make sure you save those.

Use File to open an Audiobooks folder. Highlight them all, make the Genre Audiobooks. Make any other changes that seem sensible to you: make sure the track numbers are in order, etc. Save them, which will make them ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1, Sansa-friendly.

This sounds complicated, but once you have Kid3 installed, all you need to do is open an audiobook folder, do a bulk fix of Genre or whatever else you need, Save it and send it over. Less than a minute for each new book–and probably more like 20 seconds.

Don’t forget to put the cap on the valve after you fill the tire :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Well at last! I think this might solve my issues. I compared 4 audiobooks Get Info lists and noticed that the book that is in the Unknow folder did not have an Album name. So in the kid3 app I added that. I also changed the Genre to Audiobook, although when I checked Get Info it is still listed as Musical Genre: Fiction.

So I made the changes to one book on my computer, and moved it to my mp3 player and it now shows up correctly in Audiobooks. Thanks, this should lower my frustration level!:smiley:

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Interesting that the musical genre is Fiction. Maybe you need to close and open iTunes after re-tagging so it will read them again after you fix them. It’s just a guess–I’m not in Mac land.