Transferring a talking book to an MP3 player

[Tony Corbett]

Assuming that what I propose is legal - that is, I own a talking book in CD
format - I would like to copy it to an MP3 player. I am new both to WMC and
MP3 players and have only read sections of the manuals.

I have two talking books to experiment with, each running to 10 CDs. Any one
CD has about 20 tracks, labelled unhelpfully as Track 1, etc. So there will
be 10 instances of Track 1 when the entire book is (if ever) transferred.
That is a problem in itself.

Now I've tried to use Windows Media Centre (WMC) to copy one CD and it did
that - but only into its own Library. I could also manage to change the
title (in the Library) of that collection of tracks so that it was now CD1.
That might enable me to separate the 10 different instances of Track 1 on
the MP3 player - if only I could get the WMC to copy it from its Library and
onto the MP3 player. And then I need to be able to coax the MP3 player to
play tracks from different folders (CD1, tracks 1 to 20; CD2 tracks 1 to 20,
etc). Let's just stick to the initial task of getting the tracks onto the
MP3 gadget.

I've also tried drag and drop with Windows Explorer but all that happened
was that I got a collection of small files, one to each track, that were not
.mp3 files and so were not helpful.

It seems to me that it is possible that talking books on CD are protected
from copying.

Have you any info that might help me here?

Thanks in advance,
Tony

[Tony Corbett]

I goofed. All I needed to do was to make a suitable internet search which
quickly located some free software, CDex, that does the necessary file
conversion to .mp3. Then it was a simple matter of drag-and-drop to put the
files onto the MP3 player. I even had the opportunity to change the names of
the individual discs before moving the files so thanks if you've taken an
interest and I hope I might have saved someone's time by this second
posting.

Tony

PS Someone also told me that I ought to have been able to do the job with
Windows Media Player, but I've not looked into that yet.

Post by Tony Corbett
Assuming that what I propose is legal - that is, I own a talking book in
CD format - I would like to copy it to an MP3 player. I am new both to WMC
and MP3 players and have only read sections of the manuals.
I have two talking books to experiment with, each running to 10 CDs. Any
one CD has about 20 tracks, labelled unhelpfully as Track 1, etc. So there
will be 10 instances of Track 1 when the entire book is (if ever)
transferred. That is a problem in itself.
Now I've tried to use Windows Media Centre (WMC) to copy one CD and it did
that - but only into its own Library. I could also manage to change the
title (in the Library) of that collection of tracks so that it was now
CD1. That might enable me to separate the 10 different instances of Track
1 on the MP3 player - if only I could get the WMC to copy it from its
Library and onto the MP3 player. And then I need to be able to coax the
MP3 player to play tracks from different folders (CD1, tracks 1 to 20; CD2
tracks 1 to 20, etc). Let's just stick to the initial task of getting the
tracks onto the MP3 gadget.
I've also tried drag and drop with Windows Explorer but all that happened
was that I got a collection of small files, one to each track, that were
not .mp3 files and so were not helpful.
It seems to me that it is possible that talking books on CD are protected
from copying.
Have you any info that might help me here?
Thanks in advance,
Tony