A couple of questions that hopefully some of you 'doper Zune and/or iPod Touch owners can help me out with here. I recently got a bunch of audio books in .mp3 format from a friend of mine. When I sync them with the Zune though they are coming up under Music and Unknown Artist…and they are kind of all jumbled together. How do I get them to load in the AudioBooks section and is there any way to put then in some kind of folder according to author and book? The Zune software I downloaded is pretty unintuitive, and I can’t figure out how to manipulate the file system at all except to add or delete content on the box.
As for the iPod Touch, I don’t even have the original software for the thing. A friend of mine bought it on eBay and then basically didn’t like it and gave it to me. I like the thing because it’s easier to use in airports and such (anywhere with a WiFi connection) for surfing the web and posting and such. I’ve got iTunes on my PC. How do I load movies and audio books to the thing and what formats does it support. I assume it does .mp3/.mp4 but what else?
For the Zune: Go to Unknown Artist and you should see a bunch of "Unknown Album"s. Right click each one and click “Edit.” You should then be able to manually re-name all of them. I haven’t uploaded any audiobooks, but theoretically each book should be one album and each chapter one “song.” Then make a “New Playlist,” name it “Audiobooks,” and drag all of the books into the playlist. Hit “Sync with Zune” and you should be good to go.
If that doesn’t work, post some screenshots and I’ll try to walk you through it.
Cool…I see what you mean. In the Zune program I can rename the albums to the name of the author and the book…and it will put all the parts of the book into the right album. Wish I could move them to the audio book section but this is a vast improvement! Thanks for the help!
I haven’t tried this with my Zune, but there is a folder that resides where ever your music collection does Labeled Zune, inside the folder are folders for all the Podcast you are subscribed to, you may also be able to drag and drop your renamed files there, and could access them with out the playlist.
With podcasts on the Zune, they are bookmarked, don’t know if the same is true for a random MP3 dropped in the Zune folder, the great thing about this unlike a file you start with the “Music Playlist” Portion is if you stop listening to File A and start listening to File B, you can come back and pick up File A where you left off. Say you are listening to a audio book and are getting distracted but still wants some background noise and want to switch over to Music, but pick up again where you left off you could. (that is if it works by dropping files into the Zune folder)
There is no “original software” for the iPod as such. The iPod is usually synced and controlled using iTunes – free download from Apple. If you’ve got iTunes, just plug it in to the USB port on your PC. Open iTunes, and it should come up on the left as an iPod. You’ll need to sync it to your computer (allow it to transfer music from your PC to it; you can only use so many computers to sync an iPod), and you should preferably Restore it to factory defaults. All of this can be done in the main frame once you select the iPod on the left.
You can load movies and audio from your iTunes Library. You can add mp3s to that by dragging them into iTunes, or by having iTunes search your computer and add them automatically. In iTunes, you can set up the iPod to automatically sync itself with the library, selected playlists, or manually (my preference). In manual sync, you drag the songs you want from the library window to the iPod.
Regarding formats… I’m not sure. I’ve dragged various file types into iTunes and, from there, onto my iPod. I believe iTunes will automatically convert some file formats for the iPod, but I’m not sure which.