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Messages - Hanna

Pages: 12
1
Questions / Re: Better control of Playback speed?
« on: December 16, 2022, 10:03:35 PM »
There are keyboard shortcuts to in/decrease playback speed in 10% steps.
Is that not what you are looking for?
Thank you! I was able to achieve what I wanted, with the shortcuts.   What are the chances that the fine-ness is increased, i.e. to 5%?
Would it be very hard to do?

2
Questions / Better control of Playback speed?
« on: November 30, 2022, 10:54:38 AM »
I would like better control of playback speed!
Is there any way to achieve this?

Scenario: Listening to Audiobook.  Want to speed it up, to get through the book faster, OR speed down, to transcribe, relax or fall asleep.  Slow down also works on books where the narrator speakes too fast or has a high pitched voice

The options currently available don't work for me. Particularly for slower speeds, the only option is half speed which sounds terrible.   I'm after incremental 0.1 reductions / increases. Alternatively a slider.

Is there a plugin or any way to fix this?  I use VLC for this at the moment. Would like to be able to do it in MusicBee. :-*

3
GOAL: Change the property "CATEGORY" to "Audiobooks" for the Snowden, Petranek and Atwood books.
- Select the files.
- Right-click > send to > audiobooks.
Thank you that works! 

I still think it would be MUCH better to either do this automatically for .m4b extensions, since they are not going to be anything other than an audiobook.

4
Hi all, a question about the file property CATEGORY and how to alter it. I cannot find a way to alter this particular property.


BACKGROUND:
File type:  .m4b   (audiobooks)
I've discovered that automatic placing of files on Android device, after transfer, works differently depending on the value of the field CATEGORY. Please see screenshot 1

---If the file property CATEGORY is set to "Audiobooks"  the file is automatically sorted according to the pattern I set for Audiobooks in MusicBee (please see screenshot 2).  

---If the tile property CATEGORY is set to "None"  then the file is put in a generic folder on my Samsung, which is not the folder I want it to be in.


PROBLEM
For this reason^^, I want to CHANGE the property CATEGORY to "Audiobooks" for a large number of .m4b filees, so that the files get correctly auto sorted when I transfer them to the device. (I am transferring so many files to the device, that I need them to be auto-sorted. Manually sorting on a mobile takes too long and if I do it from the computer, Explorer frequently crashes. Yes I am a nerd with too many books and so are most people reading a forum like this, probably!  )

However, it seems that this property cannot be changed.
I'm not sure how the value Audiobook was set as the category. I did not set it.

I've used "Media Info" to try to figure out if there are any specific properties to the files. In Media Info, there is no difference between files that are affected. I found two files with the exact same encoding properties, that were affected by this.
The only difference I can see, is the value of the property Category, which I am not able to change. . I can reproduce the problem at will depending on the value of this property, so I am sure that it is the key to my problem.


EXAMPLES:  
--Category = None (not sorted as expected)  E. Snowden - Permanent Record   ;    S. Petranek - How We'll Live on Mars

--Category = Audiobooks  (sorted as expected)   Caragh M. O'Brien - Birthmarked ;  Viktor Mayer-Schönberger - Big Data


GOAL:
Change the property "CATEGORY" to "Audiobooks" for the Snowden, Petranek and Atwood books.


STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1. Create a playlist in MusicBee.
2. Add one file each from the the Examples, to the playlist.
3. Observe how one has Category=Audiobooks and the other does not.
4. If you want to see the entire flow, then set a path on an Android device, for transferring Audiobooks to your mobile phone. See screenshot 2 for dynamic paths based on metadata values. Then right click on the playlist and select "Transfer to Device".
5. Observe how the files with Category=Audiobooks transfer according to your path, but the file with Category=None is put in a Root folder called AUDIOBOOKS which you did not specify anywhere.
6. If you are using the extremely popular Smart Audiobook Player Android app, this means you will have to manually move the file on the phone, and rename the folders manually to get the file to display correctly in Smart Audiobook Player.


:-* IDEAL BEHAVIOUR: :-*
--Treat all files with extension .m4b as Audiobooks.  This format is not used for anything other than spoken word with a long duration (i.e.audiobooks), so it can be assumed that anything with extension .m4b is going to be considered an audiobook, by the user.
--I.e.  If file extension = .m4b   set Category = Audiobooks
--Alternatively, allow the user to manually edit this property.
 

SCREENSHOTS:

Screenshot 1 with property "Category" highlighted.




Screenshot 2 with the sorting pattern on Device, which only works if Property = Audiobooks.


5
Questions / Re: converting itunes m4p files to mp3
« on: November 16, 2022, 12:21:59 PM »
@Seansun and Hanna- you're both responding to a thread in which the latest post is more than two years old. And the original post is from 2014. And most of the participants in the thread haven't been on the forum since the day they posted.
Haha, oh well!  I did not check the date, simply saw the thread below my own and wanted to help out where i can....

6
Questions / Re: converting itunes m4p files to mp3
« on: November 16, 2022, 11:05:06 AM »
Hi

I made the mistake of buying some songs from Apple and now I would like to convert them so I can actually hear them. I DL'ed and installed BASS_AAC.DLL but now MusicBee says the files are corrupt or unplayable.

How does everyone else deal with this? Out of my 3-4,000 songs I only have a few like this. Should I just pitch them and give up?

There are TONS of audio converters out there. For example dBPoweramp is consider "standard" at sites like Redacted (audio filesharing site).
One benefit with that is that you can do batch jobs, for example a few hundred in each go.

There are a ton that can convert just about anything to anything else.  Have you googled "Convert m4p to mp3"?

I have no personal experience since I never bought music from the Apple store. But I've converted lots of other copyrighted files to non-copyrighted.

Here is a forum with people who do a lot of conversions. I'm sure you can figure out how to do it. https://forum.videohelp.com/

When converting you ideally want to avoid loss in the quality of the sound...  It's a bit of a science, but just make sure you check those settings and don't do any more than ONE conversion because the quality is reduced for every conversion you do.

7
Using both files and the steps provided i have no issues with either.
Did you try rescanning the files as I suggested?
I'm not sure what re-scanning mean?  Removing and re-adding? Or something else?  I've done that. If it's something else, can you explain, please?

Here is my screenshot of the problem, as I see it... (warning, loads slowly!)

I.e.  MusicBee might be reading the file properties differently than iTunes, possible taking in more parameters about the file.  

iTunes:   "Yup, I know this .m4b file format. It's an AAC encoded audiobook even if it's a bit of a hack.  Oh well, I'm Apple and my users are stupid! I'll give them a break...
MusicBee:  "What the hell is this? Not good enough!   It has an .m4b extension, but I reckon it's an .mp4. Is it a Stream or what? So it can't have a Time, I'll negate it!  "  


UPDATE


The file from mega is a .mp4 file not a .m4b file, so perhaps the wrong file was uploaded?
In any case, update to v3.5 if not already using it and then try right click/ Send To/ Rescan File
Thanks Steven!!
Damn you were right from the start!  I was so caught up in my description and missed your instructions.
When I re-scan, it works! Sorry about my miss!

But the thing is, I had JUST added those files to the library. If they sat there for 5 years, I get it, but.... How did this happen?
Best scenario of course, would be that there is no need to Re-scan, but rescanning sure works as a workaround/fix.
Good for me, since I'm organising the library and had 100s of books like this.

What does Re-scan DO, that wasn't done when the file was added??
 Seems like a great "catch-all" fix... I'll remember for next time.

If this comes up again, I think it's likely going to be for somebody with tons of audiobooks of which some are from less official sites, or, they did some re-encoding or merging themselves.

8
Versions:  MusicBee 3.5.8296
Scenario: User has an extensive audiobook library and wants to organise audiobooks into PLAYLISTS
Problem:  Some .m4b (AAC encoded) files are reported in MusicBee as Kind = Stream. This in turn, leads to the TIme property of the file, being reported as a negative number.  




STEPS TO REPRODUCE

1)  Download audiobook files "Marie Lu - Champion.m4b" and "Marie Lu - Legend.m4b"
2) Observe how both files have file extension .m4b
2) Create a playlist in Music Bee.
3) Add the two files to the playlist.
4) Enable "Detailed" view, i.e. not the "pretty" view with grid and cover.
5) Ensure that the fields "Kind" and "Time" are enabled.
4) Observe how the book Champion and Legend display different,  with the Kind and Time properties.

5) Observe undesirable behaviour:  Champion is listed as "Stream" and the Time value is displayed as a negative number (seems to be the correct time, but with a minus sign in front!)  
6) Legend is listed as you would expect. Kind = AAC media and Time is a positive value.

EXPECTED BEHAVIOUR:
Both files should behave the same, as happens in iTunes.

Comment:
If I check these files in Mediainfo, I see that they were encoded in different ways.  The Champion file is in fact a merge of a bunch of .mp3 files that were then converted to .mp4 , just like Steven said.

However, when merging in this way (which is common in filesharing) you merge to .mp4 because this is what the available tools offer, basically. But you can then simply change the file extension to .m4b afterwards and in iTunes, the file behaves exacty as any other .m4b,  for example direct rips from Audible .aax  copyrighted fields.

I.e. iTunes is slightly "kinder" in its treatment of these non-optimal rips.  There is no distinction in how it treats these two files, whereas MusicBee is stricter and treats the "Champion" file differently, due to it having slightly different properties, because of how it was created.
I think that MusicBee should care only about the file extension. If the file has extension .m4b then the user expects it to be treated as an audiobook because  .m4b has no other purpose.

Perhaps take a look at the file properties in MediaInfo tool and consider if it is possible to change how MusicBee sets the "Kind" property (it is set automatically with no way to change it, I think!)  Perhaps also try to figure out why Time is reported as a negative number!  This is bug like behaviour imo, since Time can't really be negative, at least not in this context, right?

9
The file from mega is a .mp4 file not a .m4b file, so perhaps the wrong file was uploaded?
In any case, update to v3.5 if not already using it and then try right
The file from mega is a .mp4 file not a .m4b file, so perhaps the wrong file was uploaded?
In any case, update to v3.5 if not already using it and then try right click/ Send To/ Rescan File
/ Send To/ Rescan File

Are you on Windows with File extensions enabled?  The file I uploaded has file extension .m4b  

I will follow these instructions, but I want to say that .m4b and .mp4 are actually the same thing.
The encoding is the same.

You can take an Audio mp4 file and change the extension to m4b and it will behave exactly as an Apple .m4b.   For example, if it is an Audiobook, the player will remember where you stopped listening. It also has some properties that regular books don;t have.

If you participate in private filesharing sites for books, most people prefer their audiobooks as .m4b because you get the entire book in one or two files, instead of a series of .mp3 which was the norm a bit earlier. Also, people like that the .m4b are split in chapters and remember how far into the file you listened.

Audiobooks from commercial vendors like Audible, also stick with as few files as possible, for user convenience.

10
I downloaded the file from mega.nz and it works fine for me.
From the music node? It wouldn't show up for me in the music node. But did when I put it in the audio books node.

Thanks everyone for looking at this. i'm in the process of uploading another .m4b which does not have the problem.
I'm writing up a proper bug report for this issue (although I'm not claiming this is a showstopper bug, just a bit "ugly"  and not an ultimate user experience. )

The behaviour in MusicBee in this particular situation, is not as good as iTunes ----- BUT ,  I have to admit that putting books (.m4b files) in a playlist is unconventional and so it might not be something that was tested for, or that a lot of people would experience.

Time should never be displayed as a negative value though, imo. Even if the user puts an  AAC file in a playlist!

Steps-to-reproduce and a compareison with iTunes are coming!     :)

11
But how to I change the "Kind" value from stream to AAC Audio?
Again, just a guess since we don't know what the actual format of those files is. First make a backup of one file. Then right-click > send to > format converter > encode as > aac
If that works, then go ahead and do the rest of them.
The file is already AAC audio, with file extension .m4b.
It behaves exactly as an .m4b but MusicBee believes it is a "Stream" (see screenshot. Kind=Stream).
MusicBee reports the length of streams as negative numbers, see screenshot.
I have uploaded a file that is affected by the problem, if anyone has time to take a look. https://mega.nz/file/IcxghJQS#arJ7ZnYX5fp-HSddpcD8aBBUCwOzwPryST1AIM0jXi4

It seems that the Kind property cannot be changed anywhere.

12
Thanks for the response!  Yeah, I double checked that immediately. These are not streams but local files.
I think I actually ripped those books from TAPES.
Maybe that's why it's stream? They were among the first rips I did...

But how to I change the "Kind" value from stream to AAC Audio?

13


As you can see, Time is reported as a negative value, if Kind=Stream.


All the files in the screenshot, are .m4b (AAC files).
These files are very early rips by me when I was very young and inexperienced. I ripped to .m4b and used in iTunes.
Not sure how Kind was set to stream when it is in fact a local .m4b file.

I can't see the Kind tag anywhere! How can I manually change it to AAC audio file?  

(Plus maybe you want to take a look at whether the negative value is really correct behaviour from the app... )

14
General Discussions / Re: Best Setup for Music and Audiobooks, on Android?
« on: November 15, 2022, 04:09:15 PM »
Thanks! Yes, I've figured out how to sync with a USB cable.
But I'm unsure which Android apps are best to use, on the mobile phone. I.e. which ones play really well with Music Bee for various types of audio content.
So I was hoping that somebody might share what they've chosen to use and why.

15
Polls / Your Gender?
« on: November 15, 2022, 11:21:35 AM »
Let's determine if there may be a demand for more pink or flowery themes for MusicBee! (sorry, I needed to add something in this field, despite the question being fairly self-explanatory)...

Pages: 12