Splasm Software Discussions

On the whole, I love this product. It solves problems that have been causing me difficulties for some time. So thank you for the release.

I am running into some issues, however. First, the application crashes rather frequently. I'm on a MacBook Pro running 10.4.8. For some audio files, for reasons mysterious to me, the program will hang when I click on the "Finish" tab. Often this crash is bad enough to take down my whole system.

Second, a significant number of the produced audiobook files have playback problems that cause the iPod or iTunes to just stop playing at certain points and reset back to time zero. These points don't appear to line up with chapter or file breaks and happen both with joined MP3s, in the middle of single, long MP3's, and in audio books created by importing tracks from a CD directly into Audiobook Builder.

These problems persist even with the new, 1.01 update. Any help on these issues would be appreciated. Thank you,

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Aaron Powell
Symbolic Order: Politics and Culture for Smart People

We haven't experienced or heard from others concerning these issues but we'd love to work with you to find out why they're happening and how we can make Audiobook Builder work perfectly for everyone.

1. The crashing issue sounds more like a hang than a situation where the application quits unexpectedly. If this is serious enough to cause the entire system to freeze then the issue is very likely not all Audiobook Builder and may only be triggered by something that Audiobook Builder does.

The first thing we need to know is whether the issue is consistent, all things being equal. If possible, try to test with the same Project - that's about as equal as we can make it. Does the issue occur the first time you enter the Finish section, the second time, or would you say it doesn't matter?

Second, has the issue ever occurred while switching to another section, such as moving between Cover and Chapters?

Third, has anything similar occurred in any other applications, specifically while opening and closing sheets or an automatic window resize?

Fourth, can we get a look at a System Profiler report? You can create one by launching /Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app, then using the File menu to save the report. Please send to support@splasm.com.


2. The issue in iTunes and on your iPod should be reproducible here, and should be fairly consistent there. Can we get you to compress and send a Project that you know causes this issue so we can build with it and see the issue firsthand? A service like http://yousendit.com can handle up to 100MB for free - do you have any Projects there that you know lead to the issue that are under 100MB?

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Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

Hi Aaron,

How long (hours) are the files? There's references in a couple of threads to a problem with files longer than 5 hrs.

(When I had this problem months ago, I started ripping my audiobooks into 4-cd files (< 5 hrs) and the problem seemed to go away.


Check out these ilounge threads:


http://forums.ilounge.com/showthread.php?t=168526
http://forums.ilounge.com/showpost.php? ... stcount=49

Fortunately, the latest version of Audiobook Builder lets you control the size of the parts so you can reduce it from the 12 hour default (Thanks Splasm!)

-Bruce

Hello all,

Audiobook Builder or the underlying QuickTime importer seems to stumble over some broken MP3 tags while building up the queue. I found out the hard way because AB kept crashing exactly at the same place each time. But there is a relative simple solution: Add your files to an iTunes playlist, mark them all and overwrite the old tags with some random gibberish. After this AB should have no problem anymore with the files...

Unfortunately I did not plan in advance and overwrote my original (defective) tags in this "try and error" experiments so I can't send my files that caused the problem to you anymore, sorry keithg. Nevertheless, I still have hundreds of books to convert and chances are good that it will happen again soon. This time I'll be "securing the problem candidate" for a professional analysis

Thanks a lot for this superb program!

-Tom

Thanks Tom!

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Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

Tom:

Thanks for sending the test file over the weekend.

We were able to duplicate the issue you mentioned earlier this month, a reliable crash when adding some MP3s that can be worked around by completely removing ID3 tags. We're not certain of the exact issue with the ID3 tags but the crash is related to Apple's QTKit, an Objective-C interface to the straight C QuickTime, and the way we allow QuickTime to periodically update its data structures. This normally works fine, but QTKit is requesting this periodic update even while Audiobook Builder flattens the incoming MP3 data to a QuickTime movie file within your Project document. Something about allowing the periodic update causes the crash. Disabling this periodic update while flattening allows your sample file to be added without a crash.

I've sent you a private email with a link to a pre-release build of Audiobook Builder 1.0.4, which disables the periodic update while flattening. Would you mind trying it out to be sure our implementation resolves the issue there?

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Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com

No problem, I promised to send you the next one I would find

Audiobook Builder version 1.0.4d1 works flawlessly for me. All the "troublesom MP3-tags" are completely ignored during chapter adding and book building, wohoo! Thanks a lot! At last I needn't worry about this "stubborn MP3s" anymore

Sorry for not getting back to you on your followup questions sooner. I've been slammed with end of semester stuff for law school.

Anyway, I think I've narrowed down the problem with the stopping during play. On pretty much any file -- even after lowering the maximum part length to four hours as suggested above -- play will abort and boot me back to the iPod main menu usually between a couple of seconds and a couple of minutes of the start of play.

This happens when resuming play on audio books I was listening to. Usually what happens is I'll start the book playing, it will abort about a couple of minutes, I'll have to scan through to find where it had left off (since it resets back to time zero after the play abort) and then it plays fine. But if I listen to another book in between plays, this process starts over again.

It happens on all audio books generated, whether from preexisting MP3s or from direct CD rips in Audiobook Builder. I don't have this problem with long podcasts -- it seems to only affect audiobooks.

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Aaron Powell
Symbolic Order: Politics and Culture for Smart People

Aaron:

Are you still experiencing any crashing in Audiobook Builder?

We've been discussing iPod playback issues at http://www.splasm.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=276 . It seems to boil down to the iPod has trouble with longer Audiobooks - from Audible.com, purchased from the iTunes Store or created with a third-party tool like Audiobook Builder. We haven't seen the issue yet in Audiobook Builder Parts that are 4 hours or less in length, but we also haven't tested every possible audio configuration and some combinations may be more likely to fail than others. I'd like to create a test file here that closely matches what you have there, then test until we get it to fail. Can you jump in on the other thread and tell us your iPod specs, as well as the length, data rate, channel configuration and sample frequency for the Audiobooks that haven't worked properly?

_________________
Keith Gugliotto
Primordial Sea Captain
Splasm Software
https://www.splasm.com