Comments on: Enhanced Podcasts in iTunes 4.9: Not Worth the Hassle

By: Walter

Walter — Sat, 02 Jul 2005 04:09:10 +0000

Theres a more detailed tutorial on how to use the chaptertool over here: http://www.voxmedia.org/wiki/PodcastChapterTool hope it helps!

By: Tim Tyson

Tim Tyson — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 22:48:21 +0000

I gave this thing a good shot. Damn, it's unworkable. "Chapter Tool requires that you are familiar with navigating folders, working with files, and launching applications through the Terminal" Good god! But, OK. I got online and learned how to do all of that. I was super careful with my xml file. I'd bet my life it has no errors.

The directions are horrendous. In one place he writes, 7. From Terminal, using the following syntax, execute the following command:

./ChapterTool -x [xml_file_name].xml -a [input_audio_file].m4a -o [output_audio_file].m4a

In the next line he has 2 dots. I suspect it's supposed to be the 2.

Well, neither one nor two made it work. When I execute the program from within the folder in which the files reside (which is one layer deeper than his instructions mention) I get results. But, oh, the results? See for yourself:

Tims-Work-Laptop:~/Music/ChapterTool/MyPodcasts timtyson$ ../ChapterTool -x Podcast01.xml -a Podcast01.m4a -o EnhancedPodcast01.m4a ChapterTool 2.0b8 (4) Copyright (C) 2005, Apple Computer, Inc., all rights reserved. ERROR: Couldn't add chapters to movie (-43) status: failed code: -43

If anyone has any luck doing this, shoot me an email. I'm dying to know how you got it to work!

By: Phil Boardman

Phil Boardman — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 22:15:08 +0000

While it's not directly a part of iTunes, Apple has a Tutorial in Garageband for recording podcasts.

By: Matt

Matt — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 03:14:07 +0000

As for your comment, I admit I was unaware that bookmark support was introduced with the iPod update. There are two reasons for this:

I have an old-school, 5GB original iPod. This update, like most lately, didn't apply to my older firmware. (Not my fault, I know.)
I was partially going based on Apple's documentation regarding the Chapter Tool. To quote the About file:

"Chapter Tool allows you to create chapters within a MPEG4 AAC file created with iTunes."

I see your point regarding why Apple didn't release a GUI tool for the enhanced podcast tool, although I can't say I agree. When's the last time that Apple did this (release a CLI tool and wait for the community to build the GUI for them)? Certainly there are examples of this happening with CLI tools that Apple distributes like the ones found in the Dev Tools, but Apple never included the tool with the hope that a GUI would be built for it - users did that on their own accord.

I did realize one reason that Apple justified their releasing the tool in that state, though. To this day, there is no end-to-end solution for recording and distributing podcasts (record -> save/organize -> convert to MP3/AAC -> create/populate RSS feed). I had hoped that iTunes 4.9 would incorporate recording, but perhaps in a future release. Therefore, I believe that they can justify that if you can figure out how to make your podcast files, you can probably figure out how to use Chapter Tool to enhance those files.

By: Jon maddox

Jon maddox — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 03:10:09 +0000

Ok, you’re jumping the gun a bit here. First off, with the iPod update, even mp3 formated podcasts have bookmark support in the way you’d like. If i stop and go to music, and then go back, they start where i stopped, even in mp3 files.

Second, you’re talking about the Os X community. You have to know that within 7 days, we’ll have at least 2-3 gui front end apps that talk to the CLI tool. Thats why apple did it. Give us a gui, and thats all we get. Give us a command line app, and we will have multiple apps to choose from. Its all very simple, an xml file has all the info on where the chapters and links and art are, and then its applied to the aac file in time code. Simple.