Audiobooks in an Album Menu

I recently thought I had figured out that my Fuse+ was just one big step away from being the perfect audio book reader like the Fuse.  I thought it just needed bookmarks.   

I had thought I had found how to make all books play in the audio books and in the correct order.  The solution is to load the books into the player into the music section via Window Explore or Windows Media player and move this file from the music section to the podcast section.  The Fuse+ seems to sorts the file and plays every book it sort based on the Mp3 File name.  Files loaded into the player via Windows Explore pay based on the Mp3 title. This  all still holds true. 

I had seen, a few days back, when moving 3 or 4 books at once I would get an error message that the move could not be done due to not enough space.  I would move these files one at a time and all would be OK.    When I tried to move The Old Testament I got this same alarm.  There was not enough space to sort and move this very large file.  Since I had loaded this file in via Windows Media Player its play order was already perfect in the music section.

I looked at The Old Testament book in the album view in the music section and found the album display to be perfect for books.  I had requested something like this display for books a while back and here it was.   I had requested that the book menu not show the same icon by every title once the book had been selected.  I had also asked earlier that the files be sorted by mp3 file name but show the mp3 title.   This is what this display does already. 

After moving the files around, as I had suggested earlier, everything would play in order but you could not see the titles anymore.  Many books have titles like Chapter 1 or The Diary of a Nobody_Ch13, but many have titles that help the story like 18 - The Unexpected Happens or Jeremiah 1.  I have tried to use a third-party software to fix some titles of book files.  After an hour, I can only change the track number.  I have used this software to renumber a few files.  I cannot recommend downloading this software.  Three of the five times I downloaded this software I got something other than the correct software and my computer was tweaked.  I suggest waiting for SanDisk to fix this problem.

In the music section of the Fuse+ you can move any song to an existing play list.  This is one very cool feature.  If something like this could be done for books, where you could move an album to the book section, we may be able to change the directory a file is displayed in and not lose the titles. This would be great.

If you use the Fuse+ primarily as an audiobook reader try moving a book back into the music section and view under album.   You could get close to the same idea just looking at a music album.

Q1. Would you like the album display for audiobooks?

Q2. If you could play music fast and slow would you move your books on your Fuse+ into the music section now?

Q3. If you could get to books quickly in the music section what would we lose by moving out of the podcast section?

Q4. Do you use the audiobooks menu created in the recent firmware upgrade?  If so, how do you make use of it?

You are right about most things except the fundamental one. I completely agree with the observation that the music section of the fuze+ is quite ok, and when moving to an audiobooks section all of a sudden (even though playing an audio file which is a book is very similar in nature as playing music) we lose about all that goodness. We get album art displayed next to every file and worse, it becomes almost impossible to play files in the right order because somehow the developper of the audiobook section failed to get files sorted on filename as well as on track number… duh. Actually looking at it now, it not only sorts on title tag, it also strips articles like “the” when applying sorting, complicating thing further.

That is pretty pathetic. However even though we are now forced to play the audiobooks through the music interface (at least me, because I uploaded gigabytes of audiobooks online for when I go travelling and no I did not also put the track number in the title tag) as the audiobooks and podcast sections are utterly useless unless you mutilate your files again to put that track number in the title tag.

However there is two important reasons for the existance of the audiobooks/podcast sections:

A. organisational convenience. For example as they are seperated the player will remember your position in the last audiobook you played, even if you have played music since. Also people have complained about the player getting slow when there is lots of tracks in the songs menu, to the extend of not being able to go to the genre menu. Splitting up some things is a good idea in such scenarios. Also if you have lots of music and lots of audiobooks, searching for an artist or album is nicer with less stuff in the list.

B. The ability to put your player on shuffle. The inability of playing audiobooks in the audiobook section also kills the shuffle function, further degrading the player.

So I strongly argue that two different, separated sections exist, and I strongly argue that both of them should be useable.

What is a mystery to me is how people can get wound up over whether something is called audiobook or podcast, when actually neither of them works. I don’t give a **bleep** what it is called as long as it works (at least a bit).

I would thus also argue for sandisk to release firmware updates more often. A grave bug like the one with the wrong sorting of files is not really tedious or timeconsuming to fix. I won’t complain if I have to wait for some new features, even though some would change my life quite for the better, but grave bugs like this could be fixed within one or two days with some goodwill, and I think all the paying users do deserve a product that at least works.

So, give priority to bugfixes and release bugfixes often, at least as long as your product has serious issues like this.

Thanks in advance.

ps: I also payed you in advance.

this issue here is not that the audiobook section does not work or that there are bugs that cause it not to sort files correctly. the issue here is that there is no standard for naming and ID3 tag information for the audiobook and podcast providors adhear to. Since there is no standard for this the firmware programers implemented a way of sorting these files and if your audiobooks have other naming conventions you may have to edit the file name or ID3 tag information to get it to display in the order you want. This is not a bug in the sence of the word and since there is no standard in which to program for it will not likely be changed. 

That said i ahve no issues getting audiobooks or podcasts in any order i wish but i do have to edit the file names and ID3 tags. 

No standard?

Perhaps you are technically correct, but what they came up with is illogical.  I simply want “audiobooks” separated into folders.  I think “Artist Name” could apply to the Author or the “cast” performing the audiobook, so I don’t mind it skipping that tag and just giving me a list of “albums” (which is the tag equivalent of “book”.)  This is also how the Fuze did it.  Were people complaining so they decided to make the new device handle it differently?  Can I get someone to confirm they prefer the Fuze+ handling of Audiobooks to the Fuze method?  Somehow I doubt it, but would love to hear your well-reasoned arguments.

As for podcasts, I have no problems (or rather, I can easily work around my problems) but wonder if they should be sorted by “Date” as many podcasts are distributed without the track # set already, but the date seems to be set for most podcasts.  This clearly makes more sense than by track title.

@drlucky wrote:

this issue here is not that the audiobook section does not work or that there are bugs that cause it not to sort files correctly. the issue here is that there is no standard for naming and ID3 tag information for the audiobook and podcast providors adhear to. Since there is no standard for this the firmware programers implemented a way of sorting these files and if your audiobooks have other naming conventions you may have to edit the file name or ID3 tag information to get it to display in the order you want. This is not a bug in the sence of the word and since there is no standard in which to program for it will not likely be changed. 

 

That said i ahve no issues getting audiobooks or podcasts in any order i wish but i do have to edit the file names and ID3 tags. 

I also can play music, audiobooks, and podcast on my player in perfect order with just Windows and my Fuse+.  I am happy you are happy.  The books I play have file name perfect.  Since we may have different sources for our books, our needs may be different. 

Do you play audiobooks in the audiobook new  menu or in the podcasts menu?   If in podcast, why not in audiobooks?     

@drlucky wrote:

this issue here is not that the audiobook section does not work or that there are bugs that cause it not to sort files correctly. the issue here is that there is no standard for naming and ID3 tag information for the audiobook and podcast providors adhear to.

I’m sorry, but you must be having a laugh. An audio file is an audio file and a bug is a bug. ID3 tags are a standard, and so are alphabetical sorting of file names. This is from the ID3 tag standard v2.3

TRCK    [#TRCK  Track number/Position in set]

TIT2      [#TIT2    Title/songname/content description]

Which one is meant for sorting??? Right, it isn’t rocket science…

I bet you there is no standard for music either that people adhere to, yet somehow firmware developers managed to figure out that the TRCK tag was meant for sorting.

Failing to make proper use for ID3 tags, there is an even better solution that would work for even more people than using the track tag:

How many people you think don’t keep their files in alphabetical order corresponding to playing order? Right, next to none. How many people do put their track numbers in the title tag? (and where are we supposed to put the title, in the track tag?)  Right next to none.

So in conclusion, if you would sort by filename, it would only break in the very rare cases where peoples filenames do not correspond to playing order. That is far fewer than the cases where people have missing tags even.

A design choice that breaks the software for everyone but the lucky few in the “next to none” category is a bug. It is a bug in all senses that it disables people to use the product, in that it leads to user frustration, technical support contacting, lost product and company reputation, in negative product reviews etc, etc…

The “this is a feature, not a bug” defense is as always pathetic.

ps: I consider the failure to do natural number sorting a bug too, just like I treat compiler warning as errors, you should treat user warnings as errors if you want to reach a decent software quality standard

I thought the Fuse+ resorted the file by file name after you moved the file from music to podcast.  I was wrong. It replace the title with the file name.  This is why every book I have downloaded in the past 5 months have played perfectly after I have moved them around.  I looked at one of the books I moved and the titles exactly the same as the file name.  We have the perfect lazy title fixer in the player.  This is why I am pretty sure the books with bad file names is a mythical creature. 

If the Fuse+ sorted audiobooks/ podcast by  file by file name and displayed the title, every file I own would play perfectly and the title would not have to be fixed to play.  I have noticed 80% of my books have titles that play ok now.  It was the 20% that was causing 80% of my sorting grief.

I have seen a player that sorts MP3 files by file name and displays the title.  It is the Fuse+.  It is in the music section.  How much effort you think it would take the apply this logic to the book section on the next firmware updated?

I have also discovered an easiest way to get my files to show up in the podcast section without having to move them.  I changed the genre of all of my books to podcast.  This causes my book to reside in the music folder and play in podcast menu.  The greater plus to this is that 80% of the books I load using WMP(Windows Media Player) play in order and the creative titles do not have to be erased or touched.    When I want to see all the books on my player I look in the podcast genre using WMP.  If the tiles are not perfect I have to move it around and let the person reading the book tell me the titles.  

I am still seriously hoping someone will take me up on looking at the album section for the design of the next audiobook section.  As I have stated in “Audiobook in Album View”, the section design is ideal.  I do agree that it would nice to keep music and audiobook is separate menus.  Once the audiobook sections is reworked the podcasts will have their own sections.  The first layer of the new audiobook section would be identical to the the podcast section. The next layer is where the magic  happens.  

Please, please, please, someone look at album section and comment, please.