Nokia Audiobooks (beta) published - why don’t you start a new hobby?
Now, this looks promising. The guys from Nokia Research Center have built a beta concept that I really like:
Nokia Audiobooks is a beta concept that enables you to enjoy audiobooks while on the go. It includes a highly efficient audio compression technology optimized for voice (AMR-WB), a player application for S60 (Nokia Audiobook Player), and an audio converter tool for PC (Nokia Audiobook Manager). Whereas traditional music player applications are optimized for music, Nokia Audiobook Player is optimized for audiobooks, enabling you to browse chapters, set bookmarks, and automatically continue from where you last time stopped listening.
A typical 400 page novel translates into a 10-20 hours long audiobook, which would traditionally take more than dozen CDs or hundreds of megabytes of low-quality MP3 files. Nokia Audiobooks uses a codec called AMR-WB, which is optimized for voice. With Nokia Audiobooks, you will get 5-10 times more content to your phone with similar voice quality, compared to content compressed with MP3 at 64 or 128 kbps.
I’ve been listening the book Master and Margarita, and I really like it. You want to try this too.
As always, please send your feedback either privately to the feedback form, publicly to the comments section of this post, or by writing your thoughts at your own blog! (just link back, and we’ll hear about it)
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Ps. I did’nt add 2D barcodes pointing to download links this time, because I haven’t been able to figure out an easy way to keep them up-to-date…
Update: comments thread closed. Nokia Beta Labs blog and all related discussions have been moved to http://betalabs.nokia.com/blog.
Great work Tommi! (and labs too)
You have made a great difference when managing Beta Labs.
Your employer should be proud of you.
Is it possible to use the player with Audible.com audiobook format?
Sounds very good (pun intended)!
Where did you got Knalli ja Sateenvarjo -books? I have these in mp3 but are these available as Nokia Audiobooks somewhere?
> Where did you got Knalli ja Sateenvarjo -books? I have these in mp3
You can do the conversion yourself, using Nokia Audiobook Manager (available on the Audiobooks page). Since it’s not a free / public domain book, we couldn’t put it available as download. Don’t be evil, and stuff.
As far as I understood, you need to download the MP3 decoder separately, to convert MP3 files.
Thisis very good news . . . However, what’s really needed is the Audible player. Has anyone actually got that java app to work on the N95 yet?
Give yourselves a pat on the back. This application is terrific. Great sound quality vs. compression and perfectly stable on my Vista PC and N95.
It would be nice if you added support for .wma or .ogg files so we wouldn’t have to pre-convert them. Also, the progress bar in Nokia Audiobook Manager didn’t start when I hit “Process” and jumped to the finish when the task was done. That should be fixed as it gives the impression that the program freezes, especially for large files.
Thanks from a language student… However, the desk top application didn’t let me to copy to my phone (n95) memory card, claimed there wasn’t enough space. Copied with PC suite.
cheers,
Jussi
Tommi, won’t we ever see again a s60v2 edition cool apps from the beta labs? I’m really disappointed
The Mosh client was released even for s40 phones, but no version for us - the s60v2 users 
Looking forward to your answer. Thanks in advance, Chris.
This “resume where you left off” functionality would be great to integrate into the native Music Player. I can’t tell you how many times I accidentally exited a podcast I was listening to!
Tried to extract an audiobook: two disks with files in nested folders, didn’t extract. Dumbed the book (203 files) on to the hard disk without subfolders. Desk top application processed them ok but refused to make a book claiming there wasn’t enough space on target…
However, last night with one bk on one disk I was able to convert (though extraction didn’t work on that one either). Played nicely on my n95.
> Tommi, won’t we ever see again a s60v2 edition cool apps from the beta labs?
Highly unlikely (except for Java apps etc), sorry.
The purpose of Beta Labs is to “shape the future together”, and 3rd Edition provides a better playground = larger volumes, better interoperability, better functionality, etc.
> Is it possible to use the player with Audible.com audiobook format?
No, at least not yet. Good suggestion, though.
Sounds exciting! And Master and Margarita is a great novel. Try Bulgakov’s short novels too!
It’s a shame that it *requires* AMR-WB format, rather than optionally using it; that format’s awkward to create on Linux, because it’s patent-encumbered by Nokia and others. (It can be used, but it normally requires compiling your own ffmpeg or gstreamer audio libraries, which is no fun. Is there any chance that the format might be made more free by Nokia?)
Hi,
We have tested audiobook manager on linux with Wine and at least in one machine it was working, if you first rip files with linux software to wav files and then use our PC SW with Wine to do the conversion. It is not very much tested but was working at least once when we tested it.
Hi.
The Audible Player works perfectly on my N73 and should also run on an N95.
Bye
Marc
Hello Guys…need some help…The AudioBooks application is not working on my N80ie.
I installed Nokia Audiobook Player for S60 3rd Edition which is compatible with N80 and with that I assume it is also compatible with N80ie…
I also followed the instructions i.e i had manually copied in the folder “e:\audiobooks” the book Treasure Island from the download page. I keep on getting the error message “Audio File is Missing: treasure_island_01-02_stevenson.awb”
I tried this with the other free books i.e. Art of War and I get the same message only with the first file name for that book.
Please advice…