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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod Apps
If you listern to classical, DJ sets or live performaces on your iPod, you either had to put up with track gaps, so you could select which part of the performance you listened to, or you ripped the whole set as one track and guessed where each part started and finished.

But not any more! As noted in this hint, Apple has released the Chapter Tool along with iTunes 4.9. This tool adds markers to an audio track, which means you can skip backwards and forwards. The tool is mainly aimed at Podcast producers, but I thought it could have uses elsewhere...

Before I set about trying to work out how the Chapter Tool worked, I decided to see if anyone else had first, and to my delight, they had. Wandering Focus has written a tutorial on how to produce gapless iTunes in three steps.

The final step involves an application called AudioBinder. This is basically a GUI for the Chapter Tool. The developer has changed the program since the original tutorial was written. AudioBinder now integrates with iTunes, so you don't need a script to export the XML file. This is much better, as the XML files I was getting included illegal characters and would cause AudioBinder to error. AudioBinder is donationware. If you give a donation, in return you get the full version, which enables you to include images and links as well as the track marks.

At last, gapless iPod music!
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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod | 17 comments | Create New Account
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Or use a free applescript
Authored by: mahood on Aug 19, '05 10:19:08AM
There's a free download of a script called Join Together at Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes which does a similar job. Just rip all the tracks separately, then highlight, run this script and it'll combine them all.

I've not checked how small the gaps are (I've used it for AudioBooks, not DJ sets) or whether it changes the picture for every track, but it's certainly worth a look... And since it's AppleScript, those features might be easily added!

Note that it can join MP3s no problem, but joining & chapterising AACs requires QuickTime Pro.

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Or use a free applescript
Authored by: brianpunx on Aug 19, '05 01:15:00PM

When I tried this applescript to combine AAC files, the final .m4a file only contained the last AAC track that was selected, not the entire bound album.

Any suggestions?



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Or use a free applescript
Authored by: DougAdams on Aug 19, '05 02:17:15PM
Are you using Join Together or another similar script called Track Splicer, which only works with MP3s? Email me for assistance.

---
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/

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Or use a free applescript
Authored by: mahood on Aug 22, '05 01:05:05PM

You do need Quicktime PRO for AAC joining - I've not tried without (as I've got QT Pro) but maybe that's it?

I know it worked fine for me...

Mark



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Hint is not visible for people that are not logged in
Authored by: PopMcGee on Aug 19, '05 10:36:24AM

You might change some switches on this article, as it appears in the rss feed, but can't be viewed until the user is logged in.



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: shavenyak on Aug 19, '05 10:52:51AM

Cool workaround, but Apple still needs to fix the iPod so it can play track transitions seamlessly. Putting chapters in an AAC file still isn't as useful as having separate files for each song, because there's still no way to put the individual songs into playlists separately. This is unacceptable for those of us who might want to listen to Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety at some times, yet be pleasantly surprised by Money or Time popping up in a random playlist at others.



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: slchang on Aug 19, '05 02:49:54PM
I know it sounds like this should be an obvious and technically simple thing for Apple to do (I certainly thought so for a long time). But, it's not... this page has a detailed technical look at deficiencies in the mp3 and AAC format that make it impossible to make separate files in those formats that can be reliably be played gaplessly. It would have been nice if the touted and modern AAC format had addressed this problem, but oh well.

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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: badtz on Aug 19, '05 07:03:55PM

despite it being "impossible" to do because of the compression technology; other players in the market DO do this .........

imo, i don't care how apple does it, but they need to copy the other players on the market on this one. :(



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: gidds on Aug 19, '05 05:29:52PM
Agreed.

There are many advantages to separate tracks: individual play counts, ratings, titles, artists, composers, years, comments -- I've made compilations where every one of those would be handy.

But there would be disadvantages, too -- you probably wouldn't want Sound Check to treat each track separately, else you'd get awkward jumps in volume. And you might want Party Shuffle to choose the whole thing in one go.

In short, this needs to be addressed properly, not just some bolt-on feature -- though simple gapless play between tracks would be a major improvement!

---
Andy/

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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: chrisw357 on Aug 19, '05 04:51:06PM
I actually discovered this "trick" a while back and have been using it on a couple of occasions. I actually write another XML for iTunes to download it as a podcast from my computer, so that the chapter titles will show on my iPod. I wrote about it on my blog (home page).

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No matter where you go... there you are!

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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: stillm on Aug 20, '05 08:01:54PM

i discovered this a couple of weeks ago as well, and have since created a number of these full-album files, both directly from CDs and from combining AAC files.

i have been fairly happy with the results, with only a couple of frustrations:
1) the start-times are often a bit off. the export script seems to round down to the nearest second, meaning that as you get further into the disc, tracks become more and more out of sync with their chapter marker. on a 20-track file, the last tracks may be 8 or 10 seconds away from the start time on the CD. the only solution i have found is to manually adjust the chapter times in audiobinder (before binding the file) to reflect the correct starts.... has anyone else found a shortcut to this?
2) while you can easily switch between "tracks" (parts of the large, bound file) through the pop-up menu in itunes, there is no way to do so on an ipod (at least on my shuffle). it treats the file as a single hour-long track, and hitting the "next track" button will open a different file instead of the next track. does anyone know a way around this?



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Chapter pointers slightly off
Authored by: DougAdams on Aug 21, '05 07:25:57PM

About chapter start times being slightly off: rounding each track's to the nearest second and adding them together to get chapter start times is not the best solution. My script, Join Together, mentioned above, uses Spotlight scripting to grab accurate durations from a file's meta data out to a millionth of a second (or whatever the fractional time happens to be). Despite the time format requirements suggested for ChapterTool--a time value such as 12:34--apparently times such as 12:34.56789 work fine, and thus provide more accuracy.

---
Doug's AppleScripts for iTunes
http://www.dougscripts.com/itunes/



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question about Join Together
Authored by: silentaccord on Aug 22, '05 04:02:22PM

When Join Together exports AAC audio from QuickTime, is it compressing it again or is it just passing the audio through unmodified?



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: jiclark on Aug 31, '05 08:21:01PM

So can anyone tell us if there's a way to get the chapters to work on the iPod? In other words, be able to click forward or backward and go to next/previous chapter, not track? Is this even possible???

Thanks,
John-o



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: silentaccord on Sep 01, '05 12:53:51AM

I've been able to skip through the chapters of tracks processed with ChapterTool and AudioBinder. On a third generation iPod, you have to press the select button to see the chapters and skip to them. On a fourth generation iPod, the chapters appear on the default view. Both iPods have the latest software. I haven't tested any other iPod models.



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: mr.quinn on Sep 25, '05 08:13:39AM

You can skip between chapter tracks in iTunes by holding down the shift key and clicking the forward/backwards buttons.



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Create gapless yet skippable music files for the iPod
Authored by: shavenyak on Sep 09, '05 01:11:38AM

Ok, I've been playing with AudioBinder for a while now. I've used it to make chapterized audiobooks out of some spoken word CD's that came from eMusic.com. I haven't yet tried to rip Pink Floyd or the 'Fingertips' suite from Apollo 18 by TMBG, but I plan to try it out on them.

I think it's a decent, but not perfect, solution. I'll let Apple off the hook on gapless playback if they make three concessions to simplify life with chapterized files:
1) Have the 'Join CD Tracks' menu item automatically make a chapterized file, without need for AudioBinder or the like (sorry to the AudioBinder developer... but this is functionality that should be built into iTunes. Besides, it would only duplicate your Lite functionality, you'd still have a market for your Pro version)
2) Display each chapter as a separate song in the iTunes library and on the iPod. Perhaps make this option selectable per song or per playlist or something, so Podcast chapters don't clutter up the place....
3) Stop displaying the Type as 'Protected' on .m4b files, unless they really are protected. :)



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