Re: [LUG] The mp3 player thing ...

[Simon Robert -Cottage <simon.robert@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 26/12/12 13:46, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 26 Dec 2012, Henry Bremridge wrote:
>
> > On Wed, Dec 26, 2012 at 12:20:21PM +0000, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> > > So after the mp3 player (Sandisk clip thing) success comes a minor
> > > irritation... It claims to be audio book cpmatible (.aa file foemat)
> > > however it's not. Well, not directly.
> > >
> > > So wifey goes and buys a couple of audio books, copies to them to
> > > player and it doesn't play them.
> > >
> > > Turns out you need to run Sandisks magical application under Windows
> > > to copy the files to the device, so who knows what it's doing -
> > > presumably somehow locking the DRMd file to the device so you can't
> > > play it elsewhere... Or something.
> > >
> > > Anynoe know a way to un-DRM those files and turn them into normal
> > > audio files? It's somewhat annoying.
> > I seem to recall that VLC can convert, perhaps with the
> > www.debian-multimedia.org sources.list, but cannot find a reference 
> > on the
> > web
> >
> > I get close eg
> > http://www.vlc-video.com/aac
> > http://www.ehow.com/how_5103828_play-ma-file.html
>
> Thee are .aa files. Appears to be 'standard' (aka monopoly) for Audio 
> Book file formats.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audible.com
>
> Gordon
files from audible.com are an absolute bugger to convert and it is 
probably impossible under linux (unless VLC has some new magic 
capabilities in the last couple of years). Last time I looked you needed 
windows, an old version of an application called "riverpast" and some 
obscure codecs. This may allow you to convert to mp3 or other formats.

The commonest advice seems to be download or play to windows using the 
audible.com application (which will indeed let you send it to an mp3 
player, or burn to disk), then play the saved files and record the 
output and then use audacity or something to break it into chunks. Once 
you have it on disk there is no DRM and you can rip them to whatever. 
This may also be true with an mp3 player. These are huge files when in 
mp3 format as a medium size novel is about 20 hours long (OK, Neil 
Stephenson writes looooong books, Snow Crash to play as CD's in the car 
was about 30 disks).

My only practical suggestion is to use virtualbox and the audible app. 
Then record the analog output from the sound card.

http://www.nomachetejuggling.com/2009/08/02/how-to-convert-audible-aa-files-to-mp3/

seems to be a method, but still needs windows. And the author says that 
you need an old version of nero - seems that audible are hot on getting 
conversion functionality removed, like in riverpast...

I'm afraid my audio books are either CD's or piratebays 
(http://tpb.5gg.biz/ a Polish PB server now the UK pirate party is 
illegal). I would happily buy this stuff if I could use it!

S







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