Preparing Audiobooks for streaming

Hey PG,

we need to prepare our productions (Audiobooks) for Spotify and Deezer.
This requires chopping up the productions in small chunks because we only get paid for the actual streamed regions.

The splits need to done automatically at silent parts of the narration.
The maximum number of part is 256.

Would you please implement such a functionality? :ugeek:

Thx,
Stanley

If you need to split at silence regions, you can already use the Auto Split tool.

I know, but we need it in like an addition in the Tools-Menu

=> Drop your files
=> enter the number of splits (max. 256) => here WL calculates how many splits are to be made and where in the audio
=> automatic rename (eg. 001_Audiobook_Chunk_aa, 001_Audiobook_Chunk_ab, 001_Audiobook_Chunk_ac etc.)
=> save to folder xy

I know, but we need it in like an addition in the Tools-Menu

If you can do it with Auto Split feature, where is the problem? You just want a shortcut?

If you can do it with Auto Split feature
the functionality is basically already there

where is the problem?
we need the possibility to enter the number of resulting files (!!) in order to get the maximum payment from Spotify (…in order to be able to buy the next update of WL :wink: )

we could now do this manually which is a pretty tedious and straining task.
Here is the place where the feature would perfectly fit

  • add a tab => optimize for streaming
    -just add the amount of resulting tracks (max. 256)
  • signal level must be under (-xy dB)
    AND
  • length of silence must be (> XYseconds)

there are a lot of Audiobooks Companies out there doing this manually at the moment and its no fun! I know its pretty hard to get across why this is a really important feature for non audiobook producers but it definately is :exclamation:

The place where you suggest to have this feature is not proper, as this is just a place to convert audio file formats.

  • signal level must be under (-xy dB)
    AND
  • length of silence must be (> XYseconds)

In the Auto Split tool, you have these options. What you don’t have, is maximum number of splits.
This is not a simple option to add, because this would be a multiple pass operation: if 300 split files are detected (for example), this means the number of splits has to be reduced to <= 256. A choice has to be made by WaveLab: with which criteria? I can imagine solutions, but this is not that easy.

What I suggest, for the time being:
Use the auto split tool, and use the marker generation option. In that way, for some given settings, you can count how many files will be produced (counting the markers).
If the number is too high, make the split factor more severe, etc. reduce the silence level, or increase the silence time.
Try again, etc.
When you have a proper number of split files, do the real split, rather than generating markers.

Philippe