Desperately need audio book solution

[Droid8MyPalm]

I use GoldWave to convert my books.

I tried Droidbook and added an audiobook to its library. When I listened the volume could barely be heard even turned up. Then I listened to other apps and the volume was way low even though the media volume was all the way up. I went to my Gallery to open a movie to see if that app had the same low volume problem and found that the movie thumbnails would not come up and the buttons were not responding without multiple taps. I went into the movie file and played a movie which was playing slow. I removed the battery from the phone and this restored the volume. I have now removed Bookdroid and the gallery is still not back to normal plus overall phone performance stalls.

Now I am looking at wiping and starting from scratch with setting up my phone. Might be a reason this app is outside the market.

Beware.

 

[Gunghoray]

OUCH!

I haven't had ANY of those issues with BookDroid. So sorry you have. However, I discovered an app that is mature, free, and has more than a thousand positive ratings. It's MixZing Lite and it's in the Market.

It plays my Audible books that have been converted to MP4's and saves bookmarks perfectly. No crashes and no issues. I may be totally off base here, but the app has worked without hesitation with two dozen starts and stops just to test it.

It's really written as a music player, but works great and has been around for awhile on Android 1.5. The 2.0 update works flawlessly.

I'm still a fan of BookDroid, though. Superb responsiveness, and the reason they tell me they're NOT in the Marketplace is because Finland isn't on the "approved" list for currency exchange yet. I don't know anything about that, but I don't think the quality of their app is cause for being outside of the Marketplace. I've seen some really juvenile programming in the Marketplace that has issues far beyond those of Bookdroid.

Just MHO.

In the meantime, I've got a new Audible.com BFF with Mixzing Lite.

Prof Ray
Recovering Storm Abuser

 

[atomicwedgie]

It's MixZing Lite and it's in the Market.

It plays my Audible books that have been converted to MP4's and saves bookmarks perfectly. No crashes and no issues. I may be totally off base here, but the app has worked without hesitation with two dozen starts and stops just to test it.

It's really written as a music player, but works great and has been around for awhile on Android 1.5. The 2.0 update works flawlessly.

You've baffled me. I installed Mixzing lite the day I got my Droid and found that it consistently screws up my Genre list. It puts much of my Dean Martin into the Comedy category, 50% of AC/DC into New Age, etc. ALL of these have been ID3d properly because I am sort of anal about that.

As for audio books... you mean you can stop an audio book, play some other things and when you go back to the book it remembers where you left off? I've seen no such feature so I am puzzled.

 

[Gunghoray]

You're right. I was premature on a few points.

I use the player to only play books, and I don't switch between books and music. Therefore, how the program organizes playlists is completely irrelevant to me. I was so focused on finding a player that kept bookmarks and stopping points that the other features and benefits were basically lost on me.

After reading your post, I did change from one book to a song and back to the book and sure enough, it lost the place it had stopped on the book.

As to how it organizes a library, I'm sorry to have misled anyone on that. I'm not the person to ask.

HOWEVER, if you're a bookhound with audible books and that's what you listen to all the time, this is a viable alternative. I think I'm going to be giving Bookdroid another chance when they come out with the 1.1 update.

Prof Ray
Recovering Storm Abuser

 

[atomicwedgie]

Ahhh... yes even the built in player will remember where you left off if you don't play anything else.

The Ambling book player has a little bit better interface but before I spent $10 to replace BookDroid that I purchased, I'll wait and see what 1.1 holds as well.

As I've said before, PodTrapper on my Storm was IDEAL as it also handled video and bookmarked everything. This way if I started watching something, later I could go back and continue those too.

 

[Gunghoray]

Now I feel dumb as a box of rocks. I've never converted my .aa books to .mp3's so I was stuck with the Audible Storm interface, which was horrible. Could have been doing this all along:stupid:

Thanks for the education.

Prof Ray
Recovering Storm Abuser

 

[atomicwedgie]

Fantastic news! This was posted over in the Versatile Monkey forums from the writer of PodTrapper;

"Heh, my original intention was to have PodTrapper on both BB and Android. (I wrote it in such a way that it should be relatively easy to port). Guess it's time to start

-Marcus"

 

[pennypritty1]

As am I. I listen more to audio books than watch movies and I'd be more than happy to have this on my droid more than anything! Although with the way the juice dies on the droid it might not be worth it until they're able to fix it so it doesn't drain so quickly.

I can listen to an audio book all day (my work allows for it too). But then I also bought a multimedia dock that my droid can sit in while listening to a novel. We'll see.

 

[atomicwedgie]

WARNING for users of Bookdroid

When listening to a book and the phone rings, you're basically screwed.

Step 1. Answer the call while the book continues to play and ask caller to be patient
Step 2. TRY to get to the home screen (sometimes it just doesn't respond)
Step 3. Unlock phone (yes, now it will require you to unlock it again)
Step 4. Find the Bookdroid icon while the phone is lagging like a politician in a budget meeting
Step 5. EVENTUALLY if you're lucky enough to actually have Bookdroid come to the foreground you can pause your book
Step 6. Go back to the home screen
Step 7. Hit the Phone icon and actually answer your call IF the person is still there.

Now, this sounds fun doesn't it? Try doing it while you're driving!

1.1 is supposed to fix this but for now, be safe and be patient!

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

Astro Player pauses playback during incoming calls correctly. Besides that, it has advanced bookmarking functionality. During the development process, we had in mind audiobooks and podcasts support. It allows listening several audiobooks, podcasts, and music playlists in parallel. It's still in beta and could be unstable. However, it's free during beta period. Any suggestions or opinions are welcomed. More info at www.astroplayer.com/forum

 

[vtrac]

Astoplayer looks promising, but something I really miss from the iPhone player is the ability to play back audio at a faster speed. It really helps when listening to podcasts and audiobooks.

 

[Andrew Terekhine]

Thanks, I added your request to the list. Unfortunately, there is no direct support for adjustable speed on Android so far. You can vote for it here: Issue 1961 - android - MediaPlayer Adjustable SampleRate/Playback Speed support. - Project Hosting on Google Code

 

[ChooChoo]

SoundTaxi & AstroPlayer work for me

I used the basic version of Soundtaxi ($19.99) to convert Audible books to MP3, copied the MP3s to my Droid and am playing them with the free version of AstroPlayer.

The Player doesn't have the ability to skip to the next chapter, but you can drag the scrubber along the play bar to skip forward & back. It also properly pauses when a call comes in.

 

[Harrison_W1337]

With the Ambling BookPlayer you can automatically download hundreds of free audiobooks. It supports chapter based navigation with full chapter titles, seamless and automatic audio file handling, quick jump navigation buttons, and play history tracking with undo and redo

Source [AndroLib.com]

 

[mjay]

Do you like this audiobook player?