I usually listen to Big Finish on my iPad. Since the Big Finish app underwent a major overhaul in March, I’ve started using it instead of iTunes. This way I don’t have to fuss with transferring audios from my computer to my tablet.
You can browse/filter your audios by range, title, etc:
Or quickly find audios with a particular companion or Doctor by searching for an actor’s name:
Notice the “download” icons. Those are purchases in my BF account. Downloading speed seems to be the same as downloading to computer, and it saves having to transfer from computer to tablet.
Once you’ve downloaded an audio, use the”Speed” button at lower left of the playback pane to fast forward more or less. The “rewind 30 seconds” is useful if you didn’t catch what someome said. Or just drag all the controls at the bottom left/right to sroll through the audio.
The book icon at lower right lets you jump to a particular chapter (Part One, Part Two, Music Suite, Interviews). It still doesn’t have track names, but I’ve found I don’t need them, especially since it saves my place when I exit/quit the app.
The menu at upper right lets you navigate through related audios in boxsets.
The fullscreen toggle is at top left. Playback continues when the display is off, and playback controls appear on the lockscreen.
And the app now works with Voiceover, reading aloud menus, selections and buttons for vision-impaired users.
The only drawback for me is that the Big Finish app only recognises purchases directly through their website. So the CDs I purchased at cons aren’t on the list.
What do you mean when you mention that it doesn’t show track names? Are you talking about embedded chapters? FYI: I’m the developer of the app and just wanted some feedback 😉
Hi, Brandon! Thank you for helping unshackle us from iTunes. I’m seeing a lot of happy comments on Twitter about the update, too, which I hope you’re seeing.
I don’t know how many people browse Big Finish audios the way I do, but I will often glance at the track list of individual mp3s, which are listed like this in iTunes on the computer:
Or on my iPad, the track names are listed thus (note the pausebutton showing which track I’m listening to at the moment):
Most Big Finish audios have six to eight tracks per “disc,” so then if we glance at what’s playing in iTunes we can get a sense of how far along we are and how much is left. If we’re lucky — although this is rare — track names also quote the first few words of that scene/track, which helps us zero in on a scene faster if we want to listen to something again.
For example, here’s how the lockscreen looks when playing an audio in iTunes, with the track name on top:
Fullscreen mode looks like the lockscreen…
except that the outer frame’s color matches the album art, and more importantly there’s a popup menu that lists upcoming tracks (I preferred the older iOS version of that menu which listed ALL the tracks and marked the one that was playing).
The CD tracks often, although not always, divide at scene breaks or other logical divisions of the narrative. So they can be more useful than just navigating to a timestamp and hunting around for the beginning of a scene. (Also, frankly, I find it easier to grasp where I am in the story by “Part 3, Track 4” than “0:39” or some other number, partly because it makes more intuitive sense, partly because I have 20-40 vision and can read words more easily than timestamps).
Compare this to the Big Finish app. Below, I can see I’m somewhere in Part III, but how do I return to the beginning of the scene above? I’ll have to fiddle with the scrollbar and hope I land on it.
(I love the big controls, though. Easy to see with my bad eyes!)
I expected the book icon to take me to a menu of tracks as above, but instead it only lets jump to Part One, Two, Three, Four— half hour episodes, not individual tracks (scenes) within those episodes.
… I hope that longwinded explanation makes sense. I’m talking about a minor feature here, though, and I’m not sure how many people besides myself use it. The important thing is that the app works, and you’ve given us a way to sift through libraries of several hundred audios (if we’re an especially rabid customer).
Yes, I see what you mean. I would prefer it to be that way also. Unfortunately this is in the hands of Big Finish. It has to do with the way they are creating the m4b files. On a side note, you could use my other app, Undulib, to get the functionality. You’d still be shackled to iTunes though 😛
Nah, it’s a minor quibble, and with all due respect, having the filters to sort through my six hundred audios (bar a few I bought on CD) is great. That “rewind 30 seconds” button is great for my poor deaf ears when I miss someone’s mutter and need to hear a line again. Thanks for all your hard work!