I'm looking for a cat for aac music files (the stuff iTunes uses).
Use Case: My father in law will not touch computers except for audiobooks he downloads to his iPod. I have taught him some iTunes (Windows) basics, but his library is a mess. It turns out, that iTunes is optimized for listening to podcasts and random songs from your library, not for audiobooks.
I would like to write a script (preferably python, but comfortable with other stuff too) to import his audiobook cds in a sane fashion, combining the tracks of each cd into a bookmarkable aac file (.m4b?) and then adding that to iTunes so it shows up in the audiobooks section.
I have figured out how to talk to iTunes (there is a COM interface in Windows, look for the iTunes SDK). Using that interface, I can use iTunes to rip the CD to aac format. It's the actual concatenation of the aac files I'm having trouble with. Can't find the right stuff on the net...
I created a freeware program called "Chapter and Verse" to concatenate m4a (AAC) files into a single m4b audiobook file with chapter marks and metadata.
If you have already ripped the CD's to AAC using itunes (which you say you have) then the rest is easy with my software. I wrote it for this exact reason and scenario. You can download it from www.lodensoftware.com
After trying to work with SlideShow Assembler, the QT SDK and a bunch of other command line tools, I ended up building my own application based on the publicly available MP4v2 library. The concatenating of files and adding of chapters is done using the MP4v2 library.
There are quite a few nuances in building an audiobook properly formatted for the iPod. The information is hard to find. Working with Apple documentation and open libraries has its own challenges as well.
Best of Luck.