Audiobooks tracks in iTunes 12 do not seem to be of "the same kind of media"

[Brooklynguy]

Et Al:

I download a lot of audiobooks from librivox, listening to them on my iPad, iPhone and my auto sound system. Lately something has cropped up.

For instance,I downloaded all the chapters of The Lodger (by Marie Belloc Lowndes). In this case I downloaded their zip file and opened it in my iMac. Another way to do this, and I get the same problems, is to download the individual tracks. Either way, I get them as mp3 files. (I found their m4b files are not broken into chapters/tracks.)

I loaded the mp3 files into iTunes 12. I had iTunes create Apple Lossless versions of the tracks, deleted the mp3 tracks and used Info to change metadata. I changed them from Music to Audiobook. Either before or after I change them to Audiobook, I change the extension from m4a to m4b.

In the past this worked fine, but I believe this started after I upgraded to this version of iTunes.

When I attempt to access Info for the audiobook or select all the tracks, I get an error message (see below).

Why?

 

[chscag]

That's a strange one. I haven't seen that error and I have tons of MP3 audio book files that I routinely save to iPods as a give away. I guess I have to ask... why are you converting audio MP3 files to lossless? I personally find no reason to do that and can't really tell the difference. Don't get me wrong, I see no problem doing it that way but I'm wondering if there is really a difference in quality?

And by the way, I'm also using iTunes 12 with Yosemite.

 

[MacInWin]

Just an illogical thought from me...if I have a "lossy" file I cannot see how I gain anything by converting it to "Lossless." What was lost is lost, I've just expanded the file size. Now if I had a lossless file and converted it to a lossy format, that would be a change, but I can't see how going the other way adds anything.

 

[MacInWin]

OH, and for the OP, one way to see which track, if any, is creating the error, try opening just one, then two, then three, etc, at a time until the error occurs. What you added last is the culprit.

 

[Brooklynguy]

That's a strange one. I haven't seen that error and I have tons of MP3 audio book files that I routinely save to iPods as a give away. I guess I have to ask... why are you converting audio MP3 files to lossless? I personally find no reason to do that and can't really tell the difference. Don't get me wrong, I see no problem doing it that way but I'm wondering if there is really a difference in quality?

And by the way, I'm also using iTunes 12 with Yosemite.

I like my Audiobooks in the m4b format so that I can bookmark them.


BG

P.S. I don't like how iBooks for Mac OS works, so I changed to calibre on my Mac and Marvin on the iPad. Works a lot nicer for me. I may try to find something similar for my audiobooks and discard using iTunes for that function.