Quote:
Originally Posted by Paulinafrica
Thanks dwig, that's what I'm currently doing, I was just wondering as to what the native format for audiobook files is in the K3 and if there's any conversion software to convert from mp3 to that specific format.
BTW, what a great name for where you live, sounds great.
Paul
|
If we call 'native format' Audible format, it is proprietary and so are the tools to create it. As far as I know nobody has managed to crack it.
One impetus for wanting to do this would be the ability to have 'chapters' within the audiobook file. There's a MP3 tagging specification called ID3v2 which supports this notion, but I doubt that Kindle supports it (assuming you get a tool to do the tagging). So I think we're left with either very long, difficult to navigate MP3 files, or splitting those up into smaller MP3s which you have to select and play individually.
You might want to check with Amazon CS to see if they support ID3v2 or have any plans to, but I suspect they'll just say the entire feature is 'experimental'.
When I first got my K3 I was infatuated with the idea of using it to listen to audiobooks instead of my 3 year old iPod Nano, which I never really came to love (never did get comfortable with the darn touch wheel). I did so for several weeks. But now I also have an iPT4 with the Audible app, and the whole idea seems ludicrous. I doubt Amazon has any plans to enhance or improve the audiobook player for Kindle (though I've made several brilliant suggestions for doing so). And they should: it is really awkward to navigate to previous chapters. You can only download the biggest fattest audiobook format (enhanced) over wifi. And the audio is a little noisy for some reason - static, whiney noises, and little dropouts (at least on my K3).
My one remaining fantasy is that at some point they'll offer a text-enhanced audiobook format, or an audio-enhanced ebook format, that will let you listen to the audiobook and follow along in the text - or just read the text without audio, make annotations, text search etc. At that point, Kindle might for once be a good platform for audiobooks. As it is, virtually any MP3 player is better, and I believe many newer ones would support ID3v3...