Category: Music Playback

Linked Apple Music – I do not recommend. Use local files

Apple Music has become increasingly hostile to Apple Music library files. What I mean is audio files you create and want to store in Apple Music. Even the interface to manually manage songs is grayed out and doesn’t show you your files that are stored locally in the Finder. In addition, unrealBook only supports locally stored audio files in the iTunes/iPad/iPod library. It always only supported local files, but at some point Apple did or did not support linked cloud files. On iOS12 it certainly doesn’t. On iOS15 it seems like it actually does supported cloud based songs.

For this reason, (years ago) I implemented direct linking of supported audio files (mp3, mp4, wav, aif etc) in the unrealBook documents folder. It’s easy to use. Simply Airdrop, dropbox, open in…. any audio file to unrealBook and it will be imported. After that, use the CD Menu->Music Controller ->link audio file button or CD->menu->play audio file->then + button or create a transmogrify play button and use the use file button to link the audio file.

This is way more reliable, has none of the problems of linked Apple Music and is not subject to any iOS changes to Apple Music.

In short, don’t use Apple Music for linked audio files in unrealBook if you can.

How to set a preset volume for an mp3 file in the unrealBook documents folder.

This assumes that you have already copied an mp3 file into your unrealBook documents folder via AirDrop, Email, iTunes or Dropbox/Box.

If you don’t know how to import a file, see importing files.

Go to the CD/Music menu and choose Music Controller.

Open the music controller and press Link Audio File

Press Link Audio File (in Blue).

Choose the song you want to link.

Choose the mp3 (or mp4) song you want to link to the page. You can use the search field to find the file. Press the title to select the song.

Next, go into the CD/Music menu again and choose Player Volume.

Set the slider to the volume you want for this song and then press Set Volume For Page.

Now when you choose this file and turn to the page and press play, the file will play at the predefined volume. Once a volume level has been saved, the window will display the volume level saved with the page. 

If you have iTunes library songs, you will need to enable system volume.

Go to settings->global->Playback and enable System volume slider control.

You will be prompted to quit unrealBook. Double-press Home button or swipe up from the bottom to see the multi-tasking card view. Swipe up on unrealBook. Then run unrealBook again.

Now you can set volumes per page for iTunes library linked songs.

Linking an audio file to a PDF file


Linking an audio file to a PDF file

You can link an audio file (MP3, MP4 etc) that is in the unrealBook documents folder. You can then play it with the Music controller or the Player.

Choose Link Audio File from the Music Controller

  

Choose Link Audio File

Choose an audio file

 

A list of files will appear. Choose one of them to link the audio to the PDF file.

Another way of linking an audio file is to the audio player’s + button.

Go to the CD (music) icon and choose Play Audio File.


Go to the CD icon and choose Play Audio File then select a file to link

When an audio file is chosen, use the blue + button to link the song to the file.

Linking a song to a PDF file


Linking a song to a PDF file

    

Choose Play iTunes Song access your iTunes Music Library.

 

Choose between your Playlists, Artists, Albums or Songs. Select a song to play by pressing it. The song should start playing.

 

Press the Back button on the top left to go back to the Music Controller.

 

Press the link icon in the Music Controller to link the currently playing song to the PDF.
Note that you can link a different song to each page of a PDF.
Every song that you link should have a name and artist defined in iTunes.

Music Controller


Music Controller

 

Press the Music Button to access the Music Player controller to control playback and link a song in your iTunes library to a PDF file.

Controlling Playback

 

The Music Controller will control the playback of any songs linked to the current PDF. The -4 and +4 buttons will allow you to skip forward and backwards by 4 seconds. The slider will allow you to jump to any point of the song. The Start offset will allow you to start from a predetermined point from the beginning in seconds.

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