Audio Book Tech Question

[brahmburgers]

I have developed an audio book from original material. The voice was originally recorded with Audacity software - then the large files were crunched to mp3 files by way of an add-on (a patch?) software. However, even the mp3 files are quite large - so the nearly 4 hours of audio winds up as a 4 CD set. My question is: How can I get the data to crunch down to one or two CD's ? is there software to enable that? I sell the audio book on Amazon.com, but even with a net of $11, I'm hardly making any money because posting the CDs to the States via airmail is expensive.

Another option is placing all the files on on DVD - which is plausible - though I still think most people who listen to audio books, do so via CD format. suggestions are welcome, thanks.

Also, if anyone is thinking of making an audio book and needs it published, let me know - though I'll be better able to assist when I get a satisfactory resolution to the issue mentioned above.

[cdnvic]

What bitrate do you encode them at?

[Simmo]

4 hours of mp3's will easily fit on a single CD. Check your encoding settings, 64 kbps is adequate for voice.

[Veazer]

I have developed an audio book from original material. The voice was originally recorded with Audacity software - then the large files were crunched to mp3 files by way of an add-on (a patch?) software. However, even the mp3 files are quite large - so the nearly 4 hours of audio winds up as a 4 CD set. My question is: How can I get the data to crunch down to one or two CD's ? is there software to enable that? I sell the audio book on Amazon.com, but even with a net of $11, I'm hardly making any money because posting the CDs to the States via airmail is expensive.

Another option is placing all the files on on DVD - which is plausible - though I still think most people who listen to audio books, do so via CD format. suggestions are welcome, thanks.

Also, if anyone is thinking of making an audio book and needs it published, let me know - though I'll be better able to assist when I get a satisfactory resolution to the issue mentioned above.

If 4 hours of mp3 audio is taking up 4 CDs, something is wrong. I suspect your files are still .wav files.

Let's consider the storage requirements for mp3. A high quality MP3 could be around 200kbps for music (greatly depending on what the music is), but the maximum for mp3 is 320 kbps. Spoken word audio is typically much less than music as it lacks the high frequency sounds like snare drums,etc. Uncompressed CD audio is 1410 kbps. Therefore, at the very minimum you should be getting more than 4 times as much audio per CD than standard audio cd format, and audio cds can hold a little over 80 minutes.

The best MP3 compressor imho is LAME, and lame even has some presets for voice. Even the standard preset would give you fantastic audio quality and easily fit on 1 CD. You could probably get your work down in the 160 kbps region. You'll want to use VBR (variable bit rate) which dynamically changes the bitrate depending on the source material complexity to maintain quality. I would export your project from Audacity as a .wav file and then compress with LAME, unless Audacity has a lame export plugin....

[brahmburgers]

thanks for the responses. So happens it's a bit over my digitally-challenged brain. I didn't know I had 'encoding sttings' (within the recording software?). ....and 'bitrate' (am similarly stumped). Because I'm based in the 2-horse town (2-elephant town, perchance?) of Chiang Rai, there are no technicians that I know of. The tech-savvy farang I was friendly with earlier have all left for other countries for reasons of visa difficulties. Anyhow, anyone is welcome to contact me. I'm not rich, but I'll be glad to pay a reasonable amount (or trade a Bt.2,000 value internet 'splitter' [one line in / five lines out]) - if you were able to crunch my files down to fit on one CD. The mp3 files are online ....or I could send the 4-disk set by mail.

[nikster]

thanks for the responses. So happens it's a bit over my digitally-challenged brain. I didn't know I had 'encoding sttings' (within the recording software?). ....and 'bitrate' (am similarly stumped). Because I'm based in the 2-horse town (2-elephant town, perchance?) of Chiang Rai, there are no technicians that I know of. The tech-savvy farang I was friendly with earlier have all left for other countries for reasons of visa difficulties. Anyhow, anyone is welcome to contact me. I'm not rich, but I'll be glad to pay a reasonable amount (or trade a Bt.2,000 value internet 'splitter' [one line in / five lines out]) - if you were able to crunch my files down to fit on one CD. The mp3 files are online ....or I could send the 4-disk set by mail.

Are you sure these files are mp3 on the disks? Do you sell this audio book as "mp3 disks"? Not all CD players can play mp3 CDs and 4 CDs for 4 hours sounds like you are selling regular audio CDs.

I would be happy to help you convert these "huge mp3s" - or whatever it is - into normal mp3s.

1 CD can hold about 10 hours of mp3 compressed audio.

There are different quality settings for mp3, from highest (320bit) to lowest (64 or even less bit), stereo/mono - in general, the lower the quality, the smaller the files. For voice you can go to 64bit no problem.

I have the feeling that there is something else behind this though...

[d44]

Low bitrate: OGG

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=35438

[engrin]

dBpoweramp Music Converter™ is free and can convert your mp3s to lower bitrates, making them smaller in file size

[Veazer]

...1 CD can hold about 10 hours of mp3 compressed audio.

There are different quality settings for mp3, from highest (320bit) to lowest (64 or even less bit), stereo/mono - in general, the lower the quality, the smaller the files. For voice you can go to 64bit no problem.

There's no real benefit to using a low bitrate like 64kbps for this project when he has so much extra room to work with on the CD, and the quality will suffer - albeit slightly. Might as well use a high quality VBR compression.

Low bitrate: OGG

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=35438

Ogg vorbis is great, but there's no way I would use a format like ogg for something to be sold commercially. Can you imagine the support headache trying to help computer newbies to get his files to play properly? And far fewer standalone players can handle ogg compared to mp3.

If you want a .wav to .mp3 conversion program, you can get a trial for a paid program like dBpoweramp music converter or a free program like MediaCoder.

After your compression is done you'll also want to make sure your files are tagged with all the needed information, I highly recommend MP3TAG.

Edited April 29, 2007 by Veazer