Here’s a note or two about yesterday’s update to Audiobook Builder.

A few users wrote in about the Maximum Part Length preference field displaying values in decimal when they felt it really should be in hours:minutes. Getting that working is just about the perfect candidate for creating reusable code, so, we took some time off from CheckBook 2.0 and whipped up a time interval formatter for this and much future use. The field now displays and accepts values in hours and minutes. Users also requested a way to change or disable the sound that Audiobook Builder makes after files are added or CDs are imported. We implemented it as a separate preference and decided to call it the “Action Complete” sound. For future reference, the volume for both the Build Complete and Action Complete sounds is directly related to the Alert volume setting in System Preferences.

This release was more about fixes than new features, though. We found a situation where AppleScript couldn’t handle certain characters in file names or iTunes track names, preventing items from being added to the current Project. Switched to requesting file aliases from iTunes, instead of file paths, and started resolving the aliases directly. Fixed. One of our tests showed us the code that sorts incoming file names, when users add files to a Project, was mishandling a Unicode string conversion and botching the final sort because of it. Fixed. A wrinkle with QuickTime 7.1.5 would cause MPEG-4′s ODSM and SDSM tracks to remain in Audiobook Builder’s final output, leading to failed enhanced chapter stop creation. We moved to removing ODSM and SDSM from the get-go, rather than disabling. Fixed.