A few years ago I contacted NextUp support to inquire if it were possible to generate .m4b files using TextAloud 3. I wanted to create my own audiobooks including book image and chapter markers to speed navigation. I received a wonderfully detailed response from Jim Bretti with the technical directions on how to do this. Fabulous customer support! At his suggestion I used the app called 'Chapter Master' to insert the markers and it worked well, especially for non-fiction texts such as essay collections into one larger file, similar to purchased audiobooks. Fiction with a lot of dialogue can be difficult to follow though.
Recently I upgraded to TextAloud 4, but the menu options don't seem to allow me to generate the .m4b files. I'm wondering if other users use TextAloud for this purpose and if so, what experiences have they had? Can we generate .m4b files with TextAloud 4?
Creating .m4b files with TextAloud 4 for audiobooks
Moderator: Jim Bretti
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Jim Bretti
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Re: Creating .m4b files with TextAloud 4 for audiobooks
TextAloud does not currently have native support for writing aac / m4b audio files. You can configure it to work using the Custom Encoder feature of TextAloud, which points TextAloud's audio encoding function at any command line tool that can convert wav / pcm audio to the format you want. The command line tool just has to accept a pcm audio stream as input.
Here is how you can add aac / m4b support to TextAloud with a custom encoder.
First visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/ and click the download button to download the free aac audio encoder. You'll download a zip containing several files. The zip includes the actual encoder in a dll file (libfaac-0.dll) and a command line wrapper program (faac.exe). Just unzip the download to any folder on your system. If you move files around, you need to keep the faac.exe program and dll file in the same directory.
Then in TextAloud, display Settings and under Audio File Options, select "Custom Encoders". Click the Add button. In the Add dialog, use a name like "FAAC Audio" or something like that. For the Sample Rate, select 44100, and set number of channels to 1. Use this for the command line (don't miss the trailing - at the very end of the command line, and fix the path for faac.exe)
D:\Users\Jim\Utilities\Encoders\faac.exe -o "%AudioDirectory%\%Title%.m4b" -v0 -P -C1 -X -
Notice that -o in the command line specifies the output file, and uses the tokens %AudioDirectory% and %Title% as placeholders for the directory and filename TextAloud normally uses. If you use .m4b as the file extension, the audio file should be recognized as an audio book.
Click OK to save the encoder.
Then, in the TextAloud Audio File Options panel, you can now choose "FAAC Audio" as an audio format, and TextAloud will use the FAAC encoder. When you select a custom encoder for the audio format, the Bit / Sample rate dropdown will be disabled since these options are passed on the command line.
Also, the zip file you download contains a help file (help.txt) that documents all the available command line options.
Here is how you can add aac / m4b support to TextAloud with a custom encoder.
First visit https://sourceforge.net/projects/faac/ and click the download button to download the free aac audio encoder. You'll download a zip containing several files. The zip includes the actual encoder in a dll file (libfaac-0.dll) and a command line wrapper program (faac.exe). Just unzip the download to any folder on your system. If you move files around, you need to keep the faac.exe program and dll file in the same directory.
Then in TextAloud, display Settings and under Audio File Options, select "Custom Encoders". Click the Add button. In the Add dialog, use a name like "FAAC Audio" or something like that. For the Sample Rate, select 44100, and set number of channels to 1. Use this for the command line (don't miss the trailing - at the very end of the command line, and fix the path for faac.exe)
D:\Users\Jim\Utilities\Encoders\faac.exe -o "%AudioDirectory%\%Title%.m4b" -v0 -P -C1 -X -
Notice that -o in the command line specifies the output file, and uses the tokens %AudioDirectory% and %Title% as placeholders for the directory and filename TextAloud normally uses. If you use .m4b as the file extension, the audio file should be recognized as an audio book.
Click OK to save the encoder.
Then, in the TextAloud Audio File Options panel, you can now choose "FAAC Audio" as an audio format, and TextAloud will use the FAAC encoder. When you select a custom encoder for the audio format, the Bit / Sample rate dropdown will be disabled since these options are passed on the command line.
Also, the zip file you download contains a help file (help.txt) that documents all the available command line options.
Jim Bretti
NextUp.com
NextUp.com
Re: Creating .m4b files with TextAloud 4 for audiobooks
Worked great again. Thanks so much 