I’ve got some problems with the design of this thing when using audiobooks downloaded from NetLibrary.
First off, I have done my share of programming. The Fuse+, sets up according to what is in the ID3 tag, and it looks for a genre: “Audiobook”. This comes down to stupid users or stupid programmers, and when that is brought up, it is usually the programmer. Yes, one can normally edit the genre with a tag editor. But do you want to design in ANY limitations? A user that is intimidated by this will not buy your product. Thus, a user who wants to listen to NetLibrary audiobooks has a problem, because the genre is “eAudiobook”. The Fuse+ cannot see this as it should, and defaults to music. An ‘intelligent’ programmer would NOT look for “audiobook” because it is to limiting. A genre that contains the string “book” would work for, well, any book.
This ought to be a very simple implementation.
My major problem is when I download a licensed wma file, and try to edit the ID3 tag, it resets the file date, and the license is no good. So there is another reason you have designed in a marketing limitation for your device. There are a lot of users out there that would not get this far, and it could also besolved by the above bug being fixed.
Next…
Having needed to go this far into the proble, IU have also found that books from Netlibrary do not have consitant tagging. Sometimes the artist/author is left blank in SOME files but not in others. Since the tags cannot be edited [as far as I know] this lends a litlle more urgency to a folder oriented option [ the user should be able to choose to be tag oriented or folder oriented based on a quick change of an option.
If anybody knows how to edit tags on a licensed file, I would appreciate your input.
true, but then quite some are called “spoken word”, “speech” or something else all together. Why limit the user to calling their audiobooks something that contains “books”. Actually according to the manual as long as you copy them in the podcast or audiobooks folders, they should show up under audiobooks.
Personally I would look for a string that matches “audiobook”, to at least cover audiobooks and eAudiobooks, but hey, there are more important flaws on this player right now.
> But do you want to design in ANY limitations?
I agree on that principle, but it is applied wrong here. I think the real dealbreaker here is you have encrypted content and you cannot change the genre tag.
If you are against limitations, don’t use DRM. I frankly refuse to use any file format that has support for DRM, as there are so much better formats that just don’t.
With audiobooks such as NetLibrary, the greatest limitation is actually the media itself, and the rights of the publishers. Applications like NetLibrary and Overdrive allow the reader to “borrow” the book for a predetermined period, in digital form. This makes the loaning of the book meet legal requirements that the publisher is happy with.
The DRM used for these formats is a little different, using an earlier form of the WMDRM platform. This is why a special client application has toi be used, like the Overdrive Media Console. I’m surprised that the modified time would affect the license, as in editing the ID3 tag metadata. Are you transferring the book to your device online, or at the library? I would think you can edit before transfer?
