Build options

Now we are ready to build the audiobook. Click on the build toolbar icon to get started. If you did provide a title in the tag window, that title will be presented as the book title choice. If not, you will need to provide a book title. This will be use as the file name as well as the title metadata. 

*When providing book title, remember while OS X only disallow use of “:” as part of a file name but if you ever want to transfer this file to Windows, do not use characters disallowed in Windows such as “/ \ : * ? ” < > |” as well. 

Two other options are provided. By default, Audiobook Wizard will add the finished book to Books app (or to iTunes if you are not yet on macOS Catalina). You may turn this off if you are planning on using other third party audiobook apps. In which case, please see the following option. 

The final option is to save a copy of the finished book to a folder. This is usually needed if you would like to have access to the audiobook file itself e.g to import the audiobook into third party apps. This is necessary as the Books app store the imported book in a hard to get at location.

If you decide to turn this on, remember the final output file is located in ~/Music/Audiobook Wizard. Please read section on encoding quality below before proceeding. 

There is an issue in Books app which may cause confusion. If a book by the same title already exist in books, the new book will NOT be added! Please delete the book by same title from the books app before building one with same title. This may happen as you are experimenting with building the same book many times.

On encoding quality

The default encoding quality is enhanced.  You can choose CD Quality, Enhanced or Standard quality. CD Quality is encoded at rate of 128kbps in stereo mode. Use this option if you have an unusual use case e.g. music mash ups, audio dramatization in stereo e.g. graphic audio series, stereo podcast etc. For most books, Enhanced encoding at 64kbps in mono is suitable. Enhanced mode is about equivalent to Audible’s enhanced mode. Standard mode is encoded in mono at 48kbps.