Audiobook Cutter Ideal Solution For Listening Books on Mainstream MP3 Players

26 September, 2006 by Peter Verhoeven

The number of Audiobooks recorded on CD is growing fast. Most CD and MP3 players do not

remember where you stopped listening and they do not have bookmark options.
What if you have to stop listening to an Audiobook 30 minutes in a one hour MP3 file?
Just download the open source Audiobook Cutter program, cut the large mp3 files and copy

them to your MP3 files.

As visually impaired I can not read printed books without the help of a cCTV. But also with

the help of such a device reading is not a relaxation for me. For this reasons I read

Audiobooks.

For visually impaired Audiobooks are world wide read by volunteers. But also the number of

commercial Audiobooks read by professionals, is growing fast. In countries like Gemany, UK

and the USA Audiobooks become realy popular.

In the past these Audiobooks were taped on multiple cassettes.
The advantage of cassettes is, that you can always start the Audiobook on the position you

stopped it. The disadvantage is fast decreasing quality of the recording and multiple

cassettes.

Actually most Audiobooks are recorded digital on CD and decoded as MP3 files. The problem

with most CD players is, that they do not remember the pposition where you stopped

listening, that they lack an option like bookmarking and that winding and rewinding is

impossible or tieme-consuming.

This is the reason why most Audiobooks for the visually impaired support the
href="http://www.daisy.org">Daisy format. This is an international standard for

navigating in digital Audiobooks.
A typical Audiobook CD in Daisy format contains navigation information files and MP3 audio

files.

The problem with the Daisy format is, that it is not accepted at this moment by mainstream

industry. There are no mainstream MP3 or CD players that support the Daisy standard.

Visually impaired are dependent on copanies in the Adaptive technology industry for

expensive Daisy players.

It is also hard to understand, that publishers try to increase the market for commercial

Audiobooks on CD, while there are no good playback devices for those Audiobooks available.

The most MP3 players can not remember the position in the MP3 file after pressing the stop

button, but also the cheapest can remember the starting point of the MP3 file you stopped

listening.

What I want is simple: cut the large MP3 files on an Audiobook CD in small files and copy

them to a mainstream MP3 player.

What I found is great!
The open source Audiobook Cutter does exactly what I want. Select all MP3 files on a CD, cut

them in small files of a fixed track length and save the result to a folder.
The folder can be copied to a MP3 player, while the new small files are automatically

numbered, so that the MP3 player plays them in the right order.

The Audiobook Cutter program is simple. After downloading the zip file and extracting AudiobookCutter.exe you can start moving your Audiobooks to your MP3 Player. No installation is needed, just tun the exe file, add MP3 files, set the track length and press the Split Audiobook button!

Audiobook Cutter is good accessible for users of screen readers and screen magnifiers. I suggested the authors of the program some accessibility improvements.
Support of hotkeys should be nice!

At this moment Audiobook Cutter is only available for the Windows platform. You can find more information and download Audiobook Cutter for free at:
audiobookcuter.sourceforge.net

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