Overdrive in iOS5

[ROMIjerseygirl]

Like the rest of you - I am frustrated that I updated my phone to IOS5 and now can't move my audio books from Overdrive. Using the Overdrive app on my phone, I am able to download audio books directly, but they have to be MP3 not WMA versions. A limited choice...

[meganasaurus]

Originally Posted by carharr

Has anyone heard any more about Overdrive's progress in fixing this problem? I'm realizing how addicted I am to my audiobooks during my commute.

haha, same here! no offense to overdrive, but i have to admit that audible.com has gotten some 1st-time business from me during this down time. audible's media player is excellent, but the books are a little bit pricey

[rehdwolfe]

From another thread I found the following work around:

Within iTunes go to edit > preferences and select
"Prevent iPods, iPhones, and iPads from syncing automatically. "

Transfer content from Overdrive Media Console to Itunes.
(You might want to do 1 part at a time)

The content will probably show up under "books" on your iphone in itunes.
It will have a random number title for no good reason.
You can right click on it and give it a new name.
(if you do one part at a time you can tell which part is which.)

Create a new playlist within itunes on the iphone.

Drag the content from "books" to the newly created playlist.

Its labor intensive but it works.

[ddmak]

Here's another work around that I found on internet...

"Please update your copy of the OverDrive Media Console for Windows to
resolve this issue.

http://overdrive.com/Softw​are/omc/

Once you have transferred a WMA Audiobook to your device, a playlist
will be created for the Audiobook. Please note that WMA Audiobooks will
no longer be listed in 'Audiobooks' on your iOS5 device."

Basically OMC created a playlist under the "Music" app in your iPhone 4S. I don't know if it will work for iPhone 4.

Cheers,
ddmak

[shred444]

Just tested out the latest overdrive console and it worked on 4S. Thanks OMC

[Aborro]

Latest "October 21, 2011" update of OMC does indeed work. However, this is simply a "workaround" and not a fix as Audiobooks are no longer listed in the Audiobooks section and chapter functionality has been lost.

[missi1197]

It's still not working for me! I tried updating OD and it said I had the lastest copy!! Guess I will try to uninstall and reinstall and see if that works!!

ETA: Well uninstalling and reinstalling worked but it still has issues. Out of 6 parts of a book I just transferred 3 parts came up saying the same thing as before. Deleted the ones that didn't work and trying again. So far it's working!! Just time consuming!!

ETA: Nope it's garbage!! It's a waste of time to continue to try to transfer one part that won't transfer right.

[sparky2]

If I understand you correctly, using the new version of OMC will treat WMA Audiobooks the same as music files. There will not, therefore, be a choice of playback speeds. The “backup 30 seconds” feature will also be missing and I expect that it will be impossible to resume listening in the middle of a disk as it normally is by using the “now playing” button. Is this what their latest version does, or are you also using a different player on your iOS5 device that replaces some of this functionality? I have read that their latest version creates a new playlist, but no other info was available.

I have learned to live without some of the features, but others would be a deal breaker for me. I have been using the rip to CD workaround (or at least a virtual version of this) and, although being a bit of a pain, it is better than nothing. Does anybody know if Overdrive has finished their repair or if they are feeling that the urgency is gone now that the issue has been addressed with the latest release?

[Aborro]

Originally Posted by sparky2

If I understand you correctly, using the new version of OMC will treat WMA Audiobooks the same as music files. There will not, therefore, be a choice of playback speeds. The “backup 30 seconds” feature will also be missing and I expect that it will be impossible to resume listening in the middle of a disk as it normally is by using the “now playing” button. Is this what their latest version does, or are you also using a different player on your iOS5 device that replaces some of this functionality? I have read that their latest version creates a new playlist, but no other info was available.

I have learned to live without some of the features, but others would be a deal breaker for me. I have been using the rip to CD workaround (or at least a virtual version of this) and, although being a bit of a pain, it is better than nothing. Does anybody know if Overdrive has finished their repair or if they are feeling that the urgency is gone now that the issue has been addressed with the latest release?

You are correct in your assumptions:

- Only normal playback speed
- No 30-second previous skip
- Resume only works if you keep listening to the same audio file. Switch to something else and you will lose the spot you left off at
- No chapter support - forcing you to find your way in one big "Part" file

I definitely cannot live without the above features which I consider "basic" for listening to audiobooks. I downgraded to IOS 4.35 from 5.0 when I first lost the ability to transfer books to my iPod. Even with the latest OMC release, I have no plans to update to IOS 5.0 as I would lose all of the features described.

I certainly hope Overdrive is working to restore full functionality with IOS 5.0 as their latest release fails to deliver the goods.

[shred444]

So I have to disagree with some of the missing features listed above. After using the new version of OMC to export a book to itunes>iPhone, It does create a Playlist and put the files in there. I am able to use the chapter functionality on the phone, but one obnoxious issue is that when unplugging my phone from my car or resyncing it with itunes will reset my position in the current chapter.

This is a pain when trying to find my spot again.

[sparky2]

Thanks for the update. I played with it myself last night and ended up with an empty playlist (although I think it was populated at one time), and two books. One book looked normal in that it had 6 parts (disks) with artwork and each disk was divided in to several 2 or 3 minute sections. The other book was titled “Unknown” and had three disks that were excluded from the “normal” book for some reason.

I tried for hours to merge these into one book, but have so far failed. I am not sure how I ended up where I did. All I know for sure is that I uninstalled OMC and installed the latest version. It was pretty late last night, so I do not know what I did from there. It could have been a regular “transfer” to device through OMC or I could heave imported a folder into iTunes. Sorry I do not have more info.

In any case, I hope that they are still working on the problem.

[sparky2]

I downloaded a new book tonight after uninstalling OMC and installing the latest version. I transferred to device (iPhone 4) and this resulted in an empty playlist with the name of the book on my phone. There were 9 parts (from 9 disks) listed in iTunes under the Books section of my iPhone (not in the computer-stored Library section of iTunes) but they did not show up under Audiobooks on my phone.

So, in iTunes I dragged the 9 parts from the books section of my device to the empty playlist on my device that had the book’s name. I went to the playlist and now all of the book parts were displayed. The playback behaved like a book. I could play it at 2 time normal speed, back it up 30 seconds, and it even had the original one to two minute sections (chapters?).

I played a bit of the audio book and then exited the playback app. I reentered the app and the phone remembered where it left off. I tried turning off the phone and going back and it still remembered where it stopped. I then completely powered down the phone by holding the power button down for several seconds and then sliding the acknowledge slider. When I powered back up and tried to resume listening to the book with the “Now Playing” button, I found that it remembered which disk and chapter, but not the position in the chapter. This would be a bummer if the book had very large chapters as some do.

The only other issue is that only the first part (disk) had artwork.

So, I cannot say that this is fixed yet. For me, however, their latest version of OMC looks as though it is a quicker work-around then copying the books to CDs and then back to the phone. If I had not heard from some others here that the correct functionality would be found in using a playlist I would have been completely stuck however. I suspect that almost all Overdrive Media Console users with iOS5 devices will be unable to use the OMC software. As it stands, each user will have to fumble around until they finally give up on Overdrive because their website does not mention any problems with iOS5.

[meganasaurus]

Thanks to everyone's help on this thread, I've been able to transfer WMA audiobooks now by updating the Overdrive Media console software from 3.2.0.5 to 3.2.0.6 and using the 'transfer' in the media console to convert the files onto a playlist in iTunes. I had to update the Overdrive Media console manually by downloading it from the site, because the updater built-into the medial console said that 3.2.0.5 was the latest version of the software. Instead of removing the software and reinstalling it, I was able to run the .EXE file off of Overdrive's website and then overwrite the software already installed on my computer.

As other posters have mentioned, this method hasn't worked perfectly either. My books's playlist was created in iTunes, but then the playlist was empty after the files had finished copying. I was able to locate the book's individual files in iTunes under Devices --> [my iPod's name] --> Books, and then I had to drag each individual file onto the playlist.

Edit-
Also, I got a couple of error messages in iTunes saying that some of the parts of the audiobook could not be read by my iPod device, so they wouldn't synch. When that happened, I deleted the grayed-out file in iTunes, shut down iTunes, restarted iTunes, and started the whole transfer for that part again. It worked the second time. If you're using the playlist method to transfer your audiobooks, I would recommend just trying to transfer one part at a time. It's (much) more time-consuming, but I only get the error messages when I try to transfer multiple parts at the same time.

[Buckeye_Reader]

I am still having problems transferring books from OMC to my ipod. The transfer wizard runs and then iTunes says that the item was not synched because it can't be played on this ipod, I have tried deleting OMC and then downloading the upgrade but nothing seems to help. I have an ipod touch gen 3. Any suggestions?

[sparky2]

First I would see if it plays on your PC. That will tell you if the digital content protection stuff is working. I once had a problem when I downloaded a book at work and then took it home via a flash drive because I had a very slow Internet connection.

I it plays okay on your PC, I would remove the existing OMC installation from the PC using the control panel’s “add/remove software” function (or whatever the equivalent thing is for your operating system). Make sure iTunes is closed before doing this. Then re-boot.

Then go to the Overdrive site and download the latest version. They are pretty rude about not posting accurate version information, so do not go by the number. I noticed that the version that worked a little better for me was posted about a week ago and the one I had been running for a year had the same version number on their site. There was no information that there was an issue addressed in this latest release.

Then install the new software and try again. My method is described a few posts up.

I am not sure if this will help, but this is what I would do. It may not be necessary to reboot, but again, this is what I would do so that the steps would not have to be repeated in case it did not work without it. If you uninstalled, downloaded, and re-installed OMC last week, this will probably not work any better than what is happening now. I am a long ways from being an expert in this, so perhaps some nice person here can chime in with another solution to your problem.