How can I organize audiobooks on my clip?

I bought an 8GB clip and want to download 7 books - a series - and then send the clip to my daughter.  The good news is that I have downloaded the material.  When I look at the internal memory on the computer, everything looks good.  When I look at it in the clip, it is all over the place.  Some books are titled, some are not. Some are in the music “play all” file and some are in the audiobook file.  Some are out of order.  Is there a non techhnical way to organize these books so they are easily found by title?  This is becoming a career and is very frustrating.  I have a fuze and never have had this problem at all.

Do these 7 books have different tagging systems.

ie. when you do a detail-listing of the files in the folders, showing Title, Artist and Album Title, do your books have differing amount of details - some books having none, others just the album title, some with Titles, others without, etc.

If so, maybe filling in the missing data will bring things into line for you.  :)

BTW I’m kinda spitballing here, cos I don’t yet own a Sansa Clip device, I do however have a Sansa 4G and do what I suggested above has brought things into line for me on numerous occasions. 

Message Edited by zwixxx on 06-14-2010 03:11 AM

As you probably know, the Clip displays your files based on the files’ ID3 tags, metadata put into the files with identifying info. as to the files’ artist/author, album/book, title, genre, year, etc. It is likely that the ID3 tags in your files are missing or incorrect.

But the good news:  you can correct the tags.  A tag editor such as MP3Tag (Internet freeware) eases the process.  You also can edit under Windows Explorer and under the Windows Properties screen for each file. 

I need help to organize my audiobooks on my Clip+.  I downloaded the Mp3tag program, however, it will not allow me to select my Clip as a directory in order to edit the details of the files.  Help!  I can’t seem to do it in Windows Explorer either.  I can see that the details need editing, however, can’t seem to find a place to do that.  I am using XP.

MP3Tag wants to see your Sansa as a flash drive, it’s the one limitation of the application I see.  Well, it isn’t a bad limitation actually, it just means that MP3Tag cannot edit the tags on the device if transfers are made in MTP mode.

 

Simply edit the tags with the original files on your PC first, then transfer the corrected files to your device as usual.  Because of the various file types I personally work with, I use MTP mode for most file transfers.  It’s better to edit the files on the computer anyway, as it’s wise to keep a backup on the computer anyway.

 

Did you download the files from a library source, or were the audiobooks from a CD?  If they are from a library source, they may be protected media, meaning that they have to be loaded using MTP mode (for the licenses).

If the books are from CD, and the chapters are converted to MP3 format using a ripping engine like Windows Media Player, the track names can easily end up being messed up.  This is because the online database used for the track data is primarily for music , and audiobooks are less common.  MP3Tag is your friend when it comes to correctly entering the track (chapter) numbers and titles.

THe first time you use MP3Tag, it can seem difficult, since the application has so many tools available.  Once you get the hang of it, audiobooks are easily fixed.

Bob  :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for the quick reply!

One of the files is from a cd which I burned to replace an old cassette, and the other ones that are horribly mixed up are free audiobooks from Libirvox - they’re old books in the public domain.  I suppose they could be in protected format then.  I will try moving the files back to my laptop and renaming them there - in the MP3Tag program, right? And see what happens.  It does make sense to have them backed up there anyways, although I’m short of hard drive space so I was trying not to duplicate if possible.  It’s probably time to get a new hard drive.

Thank you again for the tips!

Hey, how about a shameless plug for a great gizmo, check out the Cruzer USB drives like these.  Having your books on a handy drive keeps them together, and saves hard drive space too.

I’ve been eyeballing some of these little guys for the HP netbook:

The HP Mini is a wonderfully portable machine, quite handy.  It has a special mode, running without Windows, allowing the device to boot quite rapidly.  The Splashtop interface runs separately from everything else on thte computer, but there’s a catch:

It doesn’t store anything on the hard drive, but prefers to operate via a connected USB flash drive, or a handy device like the one you see here, via a built-in socket.

I love keeping projects protected with their own memory.

Let us know how your editing goes.  Be sure to set MP3Tag to write the files in ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1 format.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy:

@joco wrote:

Thanks for the quick reply!

 

. . . and the other ones that are horribly mixed up are free audiobooks from Libirvox - they’re old books in the public domain.  I suppose they could be in protected format then.

If they’re in the public domain, i doubt very much if they’re ‘protected’. What file format are they in? MP3 format has no such DRM crippling, but if they’re WMA they could be ‘protected’.

The Librivox files I have are mp3, and they were write-protected.  The MP3Tag program took care of that though.  I am so pleased - giving each file an album title and a track number has them completely organized now.  Yay!  Thank you for the tips. :smiley:

Bob - I did not change the setting on MP3Tag to write the files in ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1 format - I did select that option now, but it seems to have worked with whatever the default setting was.  What is the difference, do you know? 

That’s a good idea about the flash drive storage … and easier on the budget for now too.  

I am so pleased to have my audiobook files organized properly!!  I can see that the MP3Tag tool will be very helpful