iPod AudioBooks "Skip" on my iPod

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

Last year, my wife bought the Audiobook CDs of "harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" and we wanted to put them on the iPod. So, I ripped all the CDs into wav format and merged them using JoinTogether.

We devided the book into 10 chapters per file. However, whenever we went to play the Audiobook files after the iPod was off, it would play for about 1-2 minutes, then skip to the next file. When we went back to the one we were listening to, it started at the beginning. It ONLY does this with Audiobooks. Songs and Podcasts are just fine.

Any idea what causes this?

Anyone else have this problem with Audiobooks?

 

[demnos]

I am having a very similar problem, coincidently, also with a harry potter audio book (Goblet of Fire though). I get this skipping problem when I try to resume play after the iPod has gone to sleep. I'll push the play button and the iPod will think about it for 5-10 seconds and usually then just jump to the start of the next file. When I go back to the previous track it'll start at the beginning of the file. This is SUPER annoying as the track is 8 hours long. To find my place again I have to manually forward through the track. Most of the time then, after I forward things along to where I want them, the iPod will take up to a minute or two (literally) to start playing the file.

Please Please Please, can someone help out here. I've seen other suggestions that the iPod might need defragmenting but how does one go about doing that on a mac? I've tried doing a full restore of the iPod through iTunes but there hasn't been any change.

I have an 80GB Video iPod (5th Gen). The drive is only 30-35% full. Filesystem is Mac (HFS+).

Thanks for any input you can give....

 

[corinhorn]

Has anyone found a fix for this? Is it only an issue with older model iPods (mine is a 5G 80GB)? Do the 4th gen Nanos have this problem? I am a huge audiobook fan and this damn skipping issue affects me several times a week with every audiobook I have ripped from CD. Interestingly, audiobooks purchased and downloaded from audible.com have no skipping issues.

 

[demnos]

Has anyone found a fix for this? Is it only an issue with older model iPods (mine is a 5G 80GB)? Do the 4th gen Nanos have this problem? I am a huge audiobook fan and this damn skipping issue affects me several times a week with every audiobook I have ripped from CD. Interestingly, audiobooks purchased and downloaded from audible.com have no skipping issues.

Yeah I noticed that too. Perhaps its a "feature" to help encourage us to buy more from the iTunes store.....

 

[ryanbrand]

The skipping after two minutes is probably being caused by JoinTogether. Music files have a setting inside them that tells the ipod player how long the track is (and it's possible that it's set to a different length than the actual length) I'm guessing that when you joined the files together, it took the length setting from the first track (2 minutes) and then JoinTogether left the length as 2 minutes for the new file (that was created from joining multiple files together).

 

[AtHomeBoy_2000]

The skipping after two minutes is probably being caused by JoinTogether. Music files have a setting inside them that tells the ipod player how long the track is (and it's possible that it's set to a different length than the actual length) I'm guessing that when you joined the files together, it took the length setting from the first track (2 minutes) and then JoinTogether left the length as 2 minutes for the new file (that was created from joining multiple files together).

is there any way to change this?

 

[chuckbutler]

mine skips as well

I have an iPod Nano, 2GB, about 3 years old. I only use it for audiobooks. All of the audiobooks have been downloaded directly from Audible or iTunes, so these are commercial releases which I have not modified.

If I'm listening to an audiobook, then pause and shut down the iPod, then within a fairly short period of time start back up, the iPod will correctly return me to where I left off in the book and play on correctly.

However if I leave the iPod off for a longer period of time, like overnight or while I'm working, when I turn it back on it takes me back to the place in the book where I left off and plays correctly for a minute or two, but then suddenly skips to a (seemingly) random location in whatever audiobook file is next in my list (which may be the same book if it's divided into multiple parts). It has behaved this way from day one. Very annoying.

I have tried the "trick" of immediately pausing play back after I resume, but this does not seem to help. I cannot find any definitive solution posted anywhere on the Internet. If anyone figures this out, please let me know. Thanks.

 

[atiecay]

I am having this issue too!

I had an old 20GB ipod from back in 2004 and I put some audiobooks on it. The audiobooks I got through itunes worked just fine, but then I started adding some I already had and they skip like crazy. I'll listen for 10 minutes or so and then it will either skip to the next track or skip back to the menu.

Well, that ipod recently died so I purchased a 120GB ipod classic about a week ago. I was stupidly hoping maybe the skipping issue was due to my old ipod being on its death bed so I happily loaded everything on the new one and took it to work.

Same problem! It plays a small bit of the audiobook and skips to the next track. I go back to the previous track and it has lost my bookmark, so I move forward a little ways past where it skipped on me and it plays for another 10 minutes or so before jumping to the next track again.

It's extremely frustrating because the file will play just fine on itunes so you would imagine it should play just fine on the ipod, too.

Has anyone come up with a real solution to this? Google pulls up a lot of people with the same issue, so you would think they would have tried to fix it by now.

 

[corinhorn]

Has anyone come up with a real solution to this? Google pulls up a lot of people with the same issue, so you would think they would have tried to fix it by now.

I eventually got a 4th generation iPod Nano. Audiobooks in which I previously had skipping issues with on my iPod Classic do not skip on my 4th Generation iPod Nano.

 

[atiecay]

Since posting, I've found that the problem seems to be adding outside files to itunes that are already in the correct itunes "format" (m4a, m4b, mp4). I have added some movies that were converted outside of itunes as well as a few songs and they ALL play the first minute or two and then skip to the menu. None of the items are "illegal" downloads, they've just been put into the correct format outside of itunes and then added to the itunes library. And it's funny that they all play fine on itunes but won't play correctly once they transfer to my ipod.

It's extremely frustrating. I have no problem adding outside mp3s - they play fine on my ipod - but the problems arise when trying to deal with files that should be correct already.

 

[yapper]

Hey, me too!

I just started having this problem as well. For years now I have been getting audiobooks from the library and burning them into iTunes, but I've been merely joining tracks so to have one file for each of the discs in the 'book'. Only recently have I learned how to join ALL tracks of a book into a single large file. Much cleaner.

However...though I am not experiencing skipping per se, I am having problems with my book reverting to the very beginning if the iPod has been powered off for several hours. An hour or so doesn't seem to affect anything.

I have an 80GB ipod purchased around 2006.

To join all tracks into one single, large file, I am using a piece of freeware called 'MP3 to iPod Audiobook Converter'. My files are around 200-300 MB in size.

has anyone made any headway with figuring out what this problem is?

 

[partking]

possible reason

I've had a similar problem. But only on the classic ipod. The same book plays normally on a nano. This is what I've heard.....
To conserve battery, the classic is designed so that while a (music) track is playing, it loads the next track into a buffer and spins down the hard drive. The problem is that the audiobook tracks are hours long, not minutes; too large for the buffer ram. So it confuses the software. In the nano, the memory is all solid state, there is no need for this action and the problem never comes up.
My work around was to buy a cheap nano and use that for my books and the classic for everything else.
Has anyone else ever heard this?

 

[RobesNo1]

Whoa! Uber bump!

 

[Paul108]

Rip a new version in iTunes

I had this problem with audiobooks CDs ripped to mp3s (outside of iTunes) and loaded on iPod Classic.
After reading the comments here, I changed my import settings and used Advanced>Create MP3 version in itunes to rip new versions.

The new versions don't skip.