Section 56. Listen to an Audiobook or Podcast at Home and On the Go

56. Listen to an Audiobook or Podcast at Home and On the Go

Before You Begin

Purchase a Song, Album, Video, or Audiobook from the iTunes Music Store

Find and Play Music in iTunes

Find and Play Music on the iPod

An audiobook is the modern equivalent of the book-on-tape: a special kind of digital music file that supports features such as automatic bookmarking (the ability to keep track of where you last left off listening) and internal chapter markers. This is pretty important, considering that audiobookswhich comprise an entire spoken-word version of a full-length book encoded into a single digital audio fileare often several hours in length. (Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace is almost 61 hours long in audiobook form!) You aren't going to be able to listen to an entire audiobook all in one sitting, and you don't want to have to seek your way back to the point where you last stopped it every time you want to resume. You might even want to pause the audiobook in iTunes, resume listening to it on the iPod, and then switch back to iTunes for the remainderand you particularly don't want to have to try to find your place in the file while you're jogging or driving.

Notes

Audiobooks might come from the iTunes Music Store or through Audible (http://www.audible.com), a service that sells audiobooks in a manner similar to the iTunes Music Store. If you have an Audible account, audiobooks that you purchase from Audible can be played in iTunes. Click the Set button next to Use iTunes for Internet Music Playback in the General subtab of the Advanced tab in the iTunes Preferences window to ensure that iTunes can accept Audible's streamed content.

Automatic bookmarking is also supported by certain kinds of videos, such as TV shows. Any song or video can have automatic bookmarking turned on by enabling the Remember playback position check box in the Options tab of the Get Info dialog box.

Podcasts work in much the same way as audiobooks. Podcast episodes support automatic bookmarking, keeping your place as you move from iPod to iTunes and back. Many podcasts also have internal chapter markers, with accompanying artwork that changes with each chapter.

With iTunes and the iPod, it's easy to keep your place in an audiobook or podcast episodein fact, it's automatic. Every time you stop playing the file, iTunes saves your place. When you want to start "reading" again, just select the file and press Play, and iTunes picks up right where you left off. The same goes for the iPodit remembers where you stopped playback the last time (even if that was in iTunes) and resumes at that point. Synchronizing the iPod with iTunes ensures that the stopping point is always preserved regardless of where you want to pick up the audiobook again, whether at home or on the go.

Tip

Owners of 4G and later iPods have the option to play back audiobooks at any of three different speeds: Normal, Slower, or Faster. Choose one of these settings from the Audiobooks submenu of the Settings menu (under the Main Menu screen). The pitch of the speaker's voice is adjusted so that it remains the same as at the normal speed; but the quality of the speech is also somewhat distorted in the process.

Listen to an Audiobook or Podcast at Home and On the Go

Listen to an Audiobook or Podcast in iTunes

Navigate to the location of an audiobook that you purchased from the iTunes Music Store or from Audible. These audiobooks can be anything from novels or nonfiction texts to radio shows, political speeches, or magazine articles, and you can find them most easily by navigating to the Audiobooks option in the Genre list.

Alternatively, select a podcast from the Podcasts source and click Play to begin listening to the most recent episode, or click the triangle to find and play an earlier episode.

Play the audiobook or podcast as you would any other song or music file. Just double-click its name or select it and click Play. Listen for as long as you like, and then stop playback by clicking Pause, by playing another song, or by quitting iTunes.

Note

An audiobook works the same way if you first start listening to it on the iPod. Just press Play/Pause or skip to another song, and your place is saved.

Return to the Point Where You Left Off

The next time you want to return to the audiobook or podcast, simply select it and play it again. Instead of starting over at the beginning, iTunes remembers where you last stopped and resumes playback at that exact point.

Tip

To give yourself some context and a refresher about where you were in the audio stream, click and hold the Back button for several seconds to rewind the track. You can also drag the playhead all the way to the left in the scrub bar to start the audiobook or episode from the beginning.

Listen to an Audiobook or Podcast on the iPod

Synchronize your iTunes Library with your iPod as discussed in Transfer Your Music and Videos to Your iPod. On the iPod, an audiobook behaves just like any other audio track: You can navigate to it by its artist (usually the author, but sometimes the person narrating the book) or by the title (found in the Songs listing). The album name is usually set to the same text as the book's title. Podcasts, on the other hand, are organized under the Podcasts submenu under Music.

Play the audiobook or podcast episode by selecting it and pressing Select or Play/Pause. Listen for as long as you like. When you want to stop, press Play/Pause again.

Skip Between Chapters on the iPod

On the iPod, you can skip between internal chapter marks within the audiobook or podcast track. While the track is playing, press the Select button to change to scrub mode; the chapter marks are visible in the scrub bar. You can scrub manually to a specific point as you can with a regular track, or you can use the Forward and Back buttons to move directly to a chapter break point.

Synchronize Your iPod with iTunes

Connect your iPod to your computer using the Dock or included cable, as described in Transfer Your Music and Videos to Your iPod. During this process, the point at which you last stopped listening to the track is synchronized with iTunes and saved as part of the information about the audio file.

Note

If you listened to the audiobook or podcast on the iPod and in iTunes, the stopping point that "wins" is the one that occurred more recently.

Return to the Point Where You Left Off

Play the audiobook or podcast episode in iTunes. The audio track resumes where you left off listening on the iPod, just as though you'd done so in iTunes.

When you reach the end of the audio track, the next time you play it, it starts at the beginning.