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May 15, 2006
Join Together Applescript for iTunes
Some days, you find a really neat tool on the Net, and you have to share. In this case, it's Join Together, one of Doug's Applescripts for iTunes.
I use my iPod primarily for audiobooks. Until a few months ago, I had been buying the audiobooks and importing them manually. Then, I discovered Audible, which can give you a single file for up to several discs/hours, complete with chapter marks. That's been great, but still doesn't help with the purchased CDs. Enter Join Together.
Take your playlist of files - in this example, 7 CDs that were split into 14 audio files. Tell Join Together that you want to merge them, edit the information to give it the name of the book, then tell it to use the same export settings as the originating set of files (which makes it easy and less time consuming since they were all imported at once). Next, tell it to save it as .m4b (to show up as an Audiobook on the iPod), and optionally, using Apple's Chapter Tool, create chapter marks in the file.
A few minutes later (very quickly with the default settings of the files), a combined file spits out into the iTunes Library. My 14 audio files are now one big file with 14 chapters. Quick and painless.
Doug - thanks a bunch! I'm going to be joining a lot of files now, and maybe using your utility to downsize them in the process.
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Comments
Join Together is an excellent tool, about which I have only two complaints, both pretty minor. The first is that the tool does not preserve other attributes than the four that are editable (name, artist, album and composer). It would be nice if, say, the grouping or genre were consistent across all files, it too would be copied into the finished product. The second complaint is that it can take a very long time for the finished product to be created, mostly because of QuickTime performance.
As I said, pretty minor complaints. I'm really happy with Join Together.
Posted by: Jeff Medcalf ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.caerdroia.org/blog/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 1, 2006 7:23 PM
The first doesn't bother me much, but I agree. The second I haven't seen much problem with - as long as everything is the same rate and "Pass Through" is selected. Picking a different rate will degrade the performance a lot, but "Pass Through" does it in just a few minutes tops.
My big gripe that I've recently run across is that the files seem to have some hiccups in them during iPod playback. I find that a combined file will - at odd times - just stop playing and go to the next file in the Playlist. Interestingly, though, if I lock the iPod, it doesn't seem to do it. That tells me that something in the file is telling the iPod to skip.
Locking it is not a real problem most of the time - unless I use a FM transmitter. Then I have to use a business card or something similar to slide under the transmitter and lock it after playback has started.
Posted by: Nemo at June 1, 2006 9:02 PM