Hello
I have been searching on the forum but haven't found anything. Basicly what I'm looking for is a program that will input a M4B file and output several MP3 files (1 MP3 per chapter in the M4B file).
I have been using Free M4B to MP3 Converter, but unfortunately, all it does is extract a single MP3 from the M4B.

Anyone knows any other programs for this job?

Thank you

NOTE - I've never seen an M4B file, so maybe someone else can give you a better answer.

Do you need to do it automatically? I don't know how to do it automatically, but with any audio editor you can cut-out sections and save the separate sections in a variety of formats. (That assumes the audio editor can open the M4B files.) If you don't already have an audio editor, Audacity is FREE!!! (open source).

Or, MP3DirectCut (FREE!!!) can take the one-big MP3 file and chop it into little files (manually).

Would you point me to a link with such file (m4b with chapters), for test purposes? Maybe you can upload some?

Have you tried foobar2000?
It can handle m4a/m4b with chapters and should be able to convert to individual mp3 files.
You'll need lame.exe for converting to mp3, though.

Hello
Thanks to everyone with their fast replies...



Thanks, I know such programs. Actually, I'm a frequent user of audacity and use another program called gtk mp3splitter that automatically detects silences in mp3 and splits them accordingly. However, I was thinking that since the M4B file when played in the ipod, the ipod recognizes it's chapters (similar to different tracks). Therefore, I guess the M4B file must contain some kind of information related to the chapter separation inside. I was therefore looking for some program that would use this info and split the M4B file accordingly.






The file I currently want to split is nearly 200mb long, I'm looking for a smaller M4B file to upload. Thanks!






I have just tried using foobar2000, it opens the M4B file but when converting it I tried using the option "Convert each track to an individual file" and "generate multi-track files". Unfortunately, both just produced one single MP3 file


We'll keep investigating, thanks for the help!

Is there any particular reason you need to transcode from AAC to MP3, rather than just splitting the file into multiple AAC (.m4a) files?

Hello Zarggg,
No, there is no particular reason. Splitting to AAC is ok as long as it keeps the same structure of chapters as in the ipod and it is done automatically. I can always convert it back to MP3. Any ideas?


Thanks.

Did you have any luck with this. I also want to do this and my reason - my Cowon Q5W will not play .m4b files so I have to convert to mp3, ogg, flac ect. The files I want to convert are approx 8hrs long and made up of several chapters.

If you don't have (lossless) sources, and you're willing to run the risk of artifacts, just transcode at a similar bitrate/comparable quality setting. There's really not much other choice if your media player cannot read the formats you're using.

My idea was to first convert the complete M4b files(10 x 8Hrs) into mp3 files which I did with dBpoweramp with good results. Now I want to chop up these large mp3 files into their revelant chapters. Using Qtime player on the .m4b files I was able to determine the exact time frame and size of each chapter(00:00:00 - 00:28:56, 00:28:58 - 01:06:08 and so on). I did try Cool Edit Pro to cut the files up into the revelant chapters but this re-converts the lame mp3's into mp3 pro files, not what I want. I will try the mp3 direct cut app DVDdoug linked to and see how that works but I suspect that also re-encodes the file, maybe not. My fear is that I will spend a week doing this and only then find out there was a much faster, easier and automatic method to achieve the same result. There are over 200 chapters in all.

Have you tried using Audacity? I've had pretty good luck with that program when I needed to chop up audio files in the past.