I am a noob. This is my tool ever created. It’s a weird feeling. Anyway, I made this little program using Visual Basic 2008 Express Edition. I made this tool because the Zune sucks for listening to Audio books. It won’t bookmark the place you were last listening to like it does for Podcasts. I found that if you change the Genre Tag of your audiobook mp3 files to Podcast it will treat your audio files as a podcast and bookmarking will work. The next problem is that, on the zune, Podcasts do not get sorted by Track number, they get sorted by their Date created. So usually all your audio book files would be all out of whack in the zune podcast section. This tool automatically decrements the creation date of a group of selected files, therefore sorting your files correctly.
More info on Zune Audio book Bookmarking here.
Please give it a try and leave me a comment if you like. It is my first program ever in VB, but I do plan on improving the tool and also adding a feature to automatically change the mp3 files genre from audio book to podcast. As of now you have to use a program like tag and rename to change the genre to podcast.
-Version History .2-
Changed program to work on 32bit systems.
-Version History .1-
Added Auto genre change of mp3 ID3V2 tags to “Podcast”.
Added Message box showing number of files processed.
Added Only allowed to edit *.mp3 files.
Download Tool – audiobook2podcast
Oh PS it was made on a Windows 7 x64 machine.
Disclaimer – Use this software at your own risk, I can not be held resposible if you accidently change the dates your porn was downloaded.
It worked! I did over a gig of files and the program seemed to lock up, but I was patient and lo and behold, it did exactly what it was supposed to do. You made my day. Thanks!
Glad it worked for you, I am by no means a pro coder so It has its issues, maybe someday I will make the time to add a progress bar onto it.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
Congrats, works like a charm. Progress bar would be welcome. Been looking forever just to find the cause and it’s as simple as the date made, but your site was the only place I found it identified. Thanks very much. This is one of the best tidbits ever for those of use that listen to alot of audio books.
Thanks this helped a lot.
I would suggest making the script recursive at some point so you can just point it at the podcast directory and allow it to fix the times on all the files in each child directory. Also a progress bar would be great. What you have works great for new CDs that I buy, it is just a lot of work for each of the audio books I have already on my Zune.
Also my software showed stuff in the podcast seciton even after I tried to remove it all so I had to delete “%userprofile%AppDataLocalMicrosoftZune” (this removes the library cache so it will be recreated at the next startup from the directories you have it setup to search)
AWESOME tool. Thank you so much!
Really great program thanks,saves hours of work. ? any idea how to get book covers on the podcast?
Thanks again Art
I hadn’t really thought about the covers until you asked, honestly I’m not sure… maybe the program Tag and Rename can add it in to the actual mp3 file itself?
Your program works great except as mentioned above no artwork! I have tried iconing the covers onto the folder in podcasts folder I have tried differant tag changing tools .They will all put the artwork on the files right up untill the file goes into my collection in ZUNE ! Thanks for a great program…
FYI, it’s not only in the podcasts that the artwork is messed up. I tried using the Overdrive software to add audiobooks as well.Abought half the time it will work fine the other half it will not install the artwork. Also My Zune120 LOOSES album covers,they stay on the Zune but they will not transfer back to my computer.
Zune software seem’s to have a problem with ALL artwork.
Hi Where is this program supose to put the podcasts??
they are not in music/zune/podcasts’or libraries/zune/podcasts. the program does not seem to work for me,it says that it processed the file but I cannot find it anywhere
Did this ever get answered? I’ve been struggling with audiobooks and finally tried this program – I get a “success” notification, but can’t find the files…
Thanks for the tool, a great asset.
Hay, thanks for your work. Any chance you are working on adding art work to the podcast.
If you do that, I would even be willing to pay for your app.
Again, thanks.
I wish I could get it to add podcast art, the problem is that the Zune software actually looks at an rss feed to get the podcast art from the web… you can’t add it locally.
Nice app.
Could you please make it possible to also increment instead of decrement ? if so, let me know. I´m really interested about this app but instead of decrementing I would want it to increment it.
You can already do that, it decrements in the order they get added in the file browser window, so just pick the files in a reverse order…
Hey just wanna say thanks for this handy little tool, much appreciate it!!!
Finally a program to normalise AudioBook to the Podcast Format. I was looking for that kind of solution since a long time.
I tried many AudioBook readers but they alway get diferent problems. The Podcast is implemented in many device, it’s the way it’s reading the files that complicate the thing.
Thank you very much.
P.S. Your programm exist since 2009. It need more “noise” about it since everybody are looking for that simple solution.
Thanks for the props… I haven’t really pimped it a lot, since it doesn’t really look polished or nice, but It does get the job done.
this has saved me SO much trouble, thank you
Thanks! Very handy 🙂
Any chance of support for *.wma files?
Exactly what I needed and it just works. No problems.
Thank you very much!
Thanks so much! Works great!
It looks as just what I keed, but how do you make it work? I don’t know what a .rar file is?
I am also only getting a .rar file – what is that? How can I use it? I really need to use your app. Does it Work on Windows 8?
I found out my self – or by asking my husband! I installed WinRar and problem solved. It Works on Windows 8 – and Thank you so much for this brilliant Tool. Thank you a thousand times!!! It will spare me for so many hours of frustration!