Alternative ways to get books into BARD Mobile?

By Jayson Smith, 30 September, 2013

Forum
iOS and iPadOS
With the pending government shutdown, it's almost certain that the BARD site will go dark, and that means no more download functionality in BARD Mobile, although books previously downloaded should still play. Should this happen, are there any other ways to get already downloaded books from a computer into BARD Mobile? I've heard something about using iTunes, but don't know how to import files into an app. Thanks.

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Comments

By KE7ZUM on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - 21:21

sure. I use itunes, dropbox and tha'ts about it. with itunes I use the file share feature. See my podcast on how I did it at http://tffppodcast.com/listen and for dorpbox I upload the books, then find them on the dropbox app on ios and click it, wait for it to do what ever it does, then click export then bard app. Take care.

By Anthony R on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - 21:21

I've got quite a few books here from NLS that I downloaded long before the Bard Mobile app came out. I know that people have mentioned how to import BRF files, but is there a way that I can import these audiobooks in to the bard Mobile app? I put the zip file in dropbox, then clicked the export option and exported it to the bard app, but it says that I'm not authorized to play the file. I'm logged in to bard, and can read all the books that I downloaded from the bard site through the app. If it's possible to drag these audiobooks in to the bard app from Dropbox, will someone plese enlighten me? Thanks.

The Dropbox app seems to work fine for importing BARD books already downloaded to the computer. I have another question I'm trying to figure out. I'm wondering if and how to get other audio directly imported into BARD Mobile via Dropbox. I have a few ripped CD audio books, and I'd also be very interested in importing standard MP3 files from podcasts. I love how well the BARD app speeds up audio, and still sounds good, unlike Audible and many podcasting apps. Dropbox won't recognize BARD as a valid app for MP3 files. However, putting the mp3 file into a zip file kind of works. Dropbox will theoretically let you export the zip file to BARD, but after it says exporting, the file doesn't show up anywhere in the library under audio books or audio magazines. My friend and I are working on this one. any ideas?

By Jayson Smith on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - 21:21

As for other audio files, I assume BARD Mobile simply doesn't support any other filetypes, except for audiobooks encoded in the BARD-specific format, and .BRF files. So it won't play MP3 or any other type of standard audio files. As for the authorization problem, it looks like the government shutdown is the problem. It seems whenever BARD Mobile opens a new book, it has to contact a BARD server to get some sort of authorization to play the book. With all BARD servers being offline due to the government shutdown, that can't happen. The only solution appears to be to play newly-downloaded BARD books on your pre-existing BARD playback device, be it an NLS player, a Stream, or what have you. Even books downloaded on Monday, when the BARD site was completely flooded, play okay on such devices.

1. launch itunes. 2. click your device name in the sources table. 3. click the apps radio button. 4. click the bard app in the file sharing table. 5. click add 6. choose the zip file. 7. add the zip files. You need to restart the bard app to have the change take effect. When I did this how ever some of my books even if they coppied right said they were not authorized to play on this player. I had to redownload and add the book again.

By allseed on Wednesday, October 23, 2013 - 21:21

the only way to transfer books from the computer to the bard mobile app and have them properly recognized is via the iTunes file sharing facility. This is according to the user guide.