Splasm Software Discussions

I searched for, and read other posts with 'Unable to load movie data from file' questions.
The ones I found did not answer my question as they were about AA and WMA files, and problems seemed to be different than mine.
Chose downloaded MP3 audiobook folder which ranged from CD01 Track 01.mp3 to CD08 Track 17.mp3.
After I received info box telling me that ABB was 'unable to load movie data from file' CD2 Track 16, and CD3 Track 11, I listened to both tracks to make sure they were complete, and then tried adding them separately.
Both were placed at end of chapters instead of in order.
They also had the number 1 added at end of chapter name although the original was not in ABB.
When I dragged and dropped, the individual mp3 was put in chapter before it and was stripped of chapter icon instead of showing as individual chapter.
I decided to start from scratch, and wound up with the same problem, except that the CD and Track numbers were different (CD4 Track 7, CD8 Track 17) this time.
Will there be any problem with having two tracks in one chapter while all others are limited to only one?
Any ideas why this is happening or how to fix it?

Thanks for your help.

Does the lack of response to my request for help mean there is no solution, or that The Powers That Be are still trying to find one
I am looking forward to a response of any type, whether it is yes, no, or maybe.

Hmm, im not sure what is going wrong, but something that will probably fix this:
convert all files to AAC and try again.

Here's how to do this:
- Make a new album in iTunes, import all those mp3's into it.
- set iTunes (Preferences -> Advanced -> importing) so that it can convert files to AAC (at the quality that you want your final audiobook to be, to save time in the next steps).
- make sure that all the files in the album have the same artist/album (give em some weird not yet use name)
- select all the tracks in that album and choose from the rightmouseclick menu -> Convert selection to AAC
- then delete the originals from your itunes library, and do a 'Show in Finder' (Cmd+r) on one of the converted tracks
- make a new project in ABB, enable Passthough (so you dont need to reencode it all again)
- import the newly converted files.. they should import fine now.. and build your audiobook
- once done you can of course delete the converted files from itunes..

_________________
-153957 Photography-

Thanks for the obvious effort you put into trying to help me.
I am semi computer illiterate, and so am forced to still have hope that 'TPTB' will come up with an easier fix.
Or at least an explanation why this happened to MP3 files instead of AA or WMA, and why different tracks are affected each time.
If a simpler fix is not offered, I will try your suggestion, and hope my Mac doesn't go up in flames.
Thanks again 153957.

This is a new issue to us. We ran a test with 1600 MP3 files added at once and didn't see any errors, but there's always more to these things than meets the eye.

A few items I've gathered from your notes:

- That the errors did not occur consistently could be an indicator the issue is not related to the files themselves.

- That the files, when added a second time to the same Project after the errors occur, ended up with a 1 after their name indicates something was copied into the Project under the original file name. That something is likely unreadable, leading to an error, and even though you can't see it it is in there so Audiobook Builder must name the second attempt with the extra 1 at the end.

- Audiobook Builder placed freshly-added audio Files at the end of the Chapters list instead of in order. It does not inherently know the proper order to place incoming Files so it sorts alphabetically based on the original files' tags or, if the files aren't tagged, their file names. It tends to be easier to spot the just-added Files, from the user's point of view, if this sorting occurs for each add operation and the sorted results are placed at the end of the Chapters list rather than for all of the Chapters to be re-sorted alphabetically.

- Dragging around in the Chapters list resulted in a Chapter being dropped into another Chapter instead of simply moving. Because Audiobook Builder supports dragging both Chapters and the Files within them things get a little tricky when users need to reorder Chapters. The drop target area for reordering items at a particular level of the outline hierarchy is considerably narrower and shorter than the target area for dragging items into each other. To reorder a Chapter you need to drag it vertically between two other Chapters and horizontally to the left of the Chapter bookmark icons appearing in the list. Chapters can also pop open as you drag and hover over them. If you intend to drag a Chapter to just after a Chapter that has popped open and revealed its Files, drag to just below the bottom of the popped open Chapter's Files and to the left of the Chapter bookmark icons. In all cases there will be live feedback in the form of an insertion bar or highlight to show you the final destination of the drag. The insertion bar will have a small circle at its far left to indicate the level of the insertion. If the circle is just to the left of the File document icons and not just to the left of the Chapter bookmark icons the drop will end up inside a Chapter.

Also, having multiple Files in a single Chapter is fine. Before you build Chapters are just groups of Files. After building, those audio files make up the audio data between the enhanced chapter stops you will see in iTunes and on the iPod. Chapters can contain any number of Files.

The primary issue now is the random failure of Audiobook Builder to load your MP3 files. Can you help us get started by reproducing the issue, resulting in the errors you saw before, then creating a System Profiler report while Audiobook Builder is still running and sending the report to us at support@splasm.com ? You can create a System Profiler report by launching /Applications/Utilities/System Profiler.app and selecting Save from the File menu. Thanks!

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

Thanks for all the information Keith.
I've been traveling, and just checking in, so it will be a little while until I can reproduce issue, and get back to you.
Thanks again for your help.