How do I convert audiobooks from mp3 to m4b?

Question

I've moved from Windows to Ubuntu and I have problems converting my new books (in mp3) to m4b. There are a lot of Windows applications which could do that, but what about Ubuntu?

Answer 1

On the linux side this is supported by some versions of libfaac or the faac binary. Here is a link for gentoo. I don't know if the out of the box libfaac on ubuntu will do it, but I kind of doubt it. A recompile or medibuntu repo might be helpful.

Answer 2

While there is many Windows based programs that can perform this via a GUI from what I can find on Linux or Ubuntu you will have to revert to a command line to achieve it.

You can try the method detailed by aking1012 but as he states I also doubt it will work on ubuntu - but you could try.

I found a step by step guide that details coverting the mp3 to m4b by first converting to a .pcm file then converting it to m4b but this seems a long way to go and requires a lot of disk space.

An easier guide is on Ubuntu Forums which requires ffmpeg, imagemagick and mp3wrap and a script that is downloadable from the link to run.

mp4tags etc: wget http://mp4v2.googlecode.com/files/mp4v2-1.9.1.tar.bz2

tar -xf mp4v2-1.9.1.tar.bz2 
cd mp4v2-1.9.1 
./configure 
make sudo 
checkinstall
cd

Remember to do the following with the script chmod +x hjb_book_creation_script.sh and run as ./hjb_book_creation_script.sh

I'm not certain how well it works but may be worth giving it a go.

Answer 3

M4baker allows you to do this with a nice gui. You will have to build it and mp4v2 from source first, as per the ubuntu guide.

Answer 4

You can do this with the m4b-tool.

First, install all the dependencies

sudo apt install ffmpeg mp4v2-utils fdkaac php-cli php-intl php-json php-mbstring php-xml

Now, install / upgrade m4b-tool

sudo wget https://github.com/sandreas/m4b-tool/releases/download/v.0.4.2/m4b-tool.phar -O /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool && sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/m4b-tool

To merge several mp3 into an m4b, run the command,

m4b-tool merge "path/to/directory/containing/mp3s/" --output-file="parth/to/merged.m4b"

You can also split m4bs, and create audiobooks. For details, read the README at GitHub.