Split mp3s into better chapters without re-encoding?

[gazpachoking]

Not sure if this is possible yet, but currently I have mp3 audiobooks split into files with long chapters. I like the ability to split chapters smartly on audio silences, but unfortunately my garmin watch doesn't recognize chapters in m4b files. Is there a way to split my mp3 audiobook into more (separate file) chapters without re-encoding anything? It seems like I could probably run merge with the chapter splitting options, then run split again, but I don't see a no-conversion flag for the split tool.

(awesome tool btw, I wish garmin handled the m4b chapters properly, I'd just convert everything with a normal merge if that was the case)

[sandreas]

Thanks... :-)

I understand what you are trying to achieve.

• You have a bunch of mp3 files, that are splitted by chapters but too long for your purpose
• You would like to keep the files like they are, except splitting them into smaller files, to have subchapters
• You would like to take advantage of the m4b-tool auto adjusting feature to split subchapters by silence
• To do this in acceptable quality, you don't want to re-encode the files but just generate the chapters

This is an interesting Problem. Did you test, wether your garmin watch does support mp3 chapters - so you could merge to an mp3 instead of an m4b and still use a single file. m4b-tool also supports embedding chapters to mp3 files... (like in podcasts)

But I also would take this as feature request. If it is not too much effort, i could add the --no-conversion flag to the split command - which would be a nice improvement.

[gazpachoking]

Yep, sounds like you understand my goal exactly. 😃

Did you test, wether your garmin watch does support mp3 chapters

Hmm, didn't even know that was a thing. I'll try that out.

But I also would take this as feature request. If it is not too much effort, i could add the --no-conversion flag to the split command - which would be a nice improvement.

That sounds like it would work perfectly. 😄

Thanks!

[sandreas]

Should work with the latest pre-release.

See:

• Download: https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/releases/tag/latest
• Instructions: https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool#installation