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iPhone and iPod touch audiobooks don't display remaining time...

B

Betonos

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 19, 2010
12
17
My problem is the following: I sync both my iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch 3rd gen to the same iTunes account. Among other things I do sync all my music library including audiobooks. These audiobooks I've copied myself from my CDs. I've set material type to audiobook, I've chcecked the "remember position" checkbox etc. For some time everything worked perfectly - each time I've paused audiobook during listening, it remembered the position and in the list of chapters on my iDevices it displayed "xxx minutes remaining" (please remember I'm talking about this info being displayed in the chapter list, not on the playing now screen). And the situation was so for at least few months. Now recently I found out that on both devices this is so only for one of the audiobooks and the rest don't display this information on chapter list. They however do remember last playing position and are able to resume. But I can't no longer easily find the last chapter I was listening to on the list because I used to look for the one stating "xxx minutes remaining" on the list :( The strange thing is, this sis true for both devices and I'm sure I havent't changed anything to the files in iTunes etc.

And for one audiobook things work the proper way...

Any idea what's going on?
 
I have also had the same problem using only one device, on my old 3G, now my iPhone4 after upgrade, I have always only ran one phone at once, it remembers the remaining time ok, but does not show in the track list so I can't tell which track in the audiobook I am up to.
 
I had the same problem, temporarily. After formatting both my PC and iPod 4th gen, once I'd restored my audiobooks to the iPod they were no longer displaying "xx min remaining."

I deleted the files from the iPod and then in iTunes I went to the right-click menu and chose "Get Info".

Make sure there are no disc numbers included. Number the individual files in order as "Track 1 of 24," "Track 2 of 24," etc. That, with no disc numbers, solved the problem for me with both audiobooks currently on my iPod.

Hope this helps.
 
I've got it!

Hi,

I figured it out. Its effectively an undocumented feature that assumes you don't care to track your position in a book/chapter once you have already played the whole thing once.

I noticed other posts about reloading the audiobooks but that action is incidental. Its the reset that triggers that actually allows your books/chapters to display which one you're on and how much time remains from the chapter display.

To get this to work, go into iTunes on your computer
--> go to the library
--> find your audio books
--> highlight the one book/chapter or group of them
--> right click on the highlighted item(s)
--> from the menu that appears, select "Reset Plays".
Now connect your device (if not already connected), go to the device name on the right, open the Books section on the left panel, and hit the [SYNC] button.

To see if this worked,
- go to the books/chapters on your device,
- play one for a few seconds, pause it, then go "back" to the chapter list.
You'll see that on that chapter, on the right side of the line, the time remaining on that chapter now appears. It worked instantly for me, and I've been looking for this answer for a long time. There do not appear to be any side-effects either.

BTW, a nice feature of this solution is that, in the iTunes library, the "first time played" date/time does not reset, which sort of lets you know if you looked at that chapter at all before. Its useful for me anyway since I'm listenting to course audiobooks using my iPhone4.

Hope this helps!

Cheers
 
Thanks for figuring out how this works and posting the fix FAAAbio

FAAAbio said:
Hi,

I figured it out. Its effectively an undocumented feature that assumes you don't care to track your position in a book/chapter once you have already played the whole thing once.

I noticed other posts about reloading the audiobooks but that action is incidental. Its the reset that triggers that actually allows your books/chapters to display which one you're on and how much time remains from the chapter display.

To get this to work, go into iTunes on your computer
--> go to the library
--> find your audio books
--> highlight the one book/chapter or group of them
--> right click on the highlighted item(s)
--> from the menu that appears, select "Reset Plays".
Now connect your device (if not already connected), go to the device name on the right, open the Books section on the left panel, and hit the [SYNC] button.

To see if this worked,
- go to the books/chapters on your device,
- play one for a few seconds, pause it, then go "back" to the chapter list.
You'll see that on that chapter, on the right side of the line, the time remaining on that chapter now appears. It worked instantly for me, and I've been looking for this answer for a long time. There do not appear to be any side-effects either.

BTW, a nice feature of this solution is that, in the iTunes library, the "first time played" date/time does not reset, which sort of lets you know if you looked at that chapter at all before. Its useful for me anyway since I'm listenting to course audiobooks using my iPhone4.

Hope this helps!

Cheers
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