iTunes and MP4, stupid?
bothered
Manchester UK
I think this goes here.
I just signed up for iTunes because there were some songs I wanted and I wanted to own them legally. I got the songs and want to put them on an mp3 disc for use in the car. I find the songs are in m4p format! It seems paranoia is king and they are 'protected' and I'm banned from converting them so I can actually use them! What half witted idiot thought that one up?
From what I've read you can burn an audio CD then rip them to mp3 but there has to be a more sensible way, I have bought them, I do own them, If I'd have bought the original discs or even tapes I could do what I wanted with them. I only want to play them in the car not sell them on or charge people to hear them! I'm sure all these songs can be found on p2p anyway but what incentive is there to use iTunes when it is so restrictive? Idiots!
I just signed up for iTunes because there were some songs I wanted and I wanted to own them legally. I got the songs and want to put them on an mp3 disc for use in the car. I find the songs are in m4p format! It seems paranoia is king and they are 'protected' and I'm banned from converting them so I can actually use them! What half witted idiot thought that one up?
From what I've read you can burn an audio CD then rip them to mp3 but there has to be a more sensible way, I have bought them, I do own them, If I'd have bought the original discs or even tapes I could do what I wanted with them. I only want to play them in the car not sell them on or charge people to hear them! I'm sure all these songs can be found on p2p anyway but what incentive is there to use iTunes when it is so restrictive? Idiots!
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Comments
That's exactly what I have to do with iTunes. What I'm saying is if I bought a CD I could convert it and make an mp3 disc so why should tracks got from iTunes be in a format that prevents me doing that? I'm new to this so don't know what options there are. Every download site I've found either wants me to use Internet Explorer or pay a subscription. I just want to download (and pay for) songs that are then mine to do with as I wish, just as if I'd bought the disc. The Walmart site looks good but I don't know what format their songs are in but they won't download outside the USA. The iTunes 'service' is pretty good but everytime I get another track I want to play in the car I have to burn two discs! Just seems a crazy way of encouraging people to buy ligitimate music.
For $30 US you can get an FM transmitter for your Ipod.
Why keep burning discs? That will cost you more in the long run.
Dexter...
i'm not sure what "reel" is talking about "protected mp3's"; there's quite simply NO SUCH ANIMAL! mp3's always have been, and always will be, PROTECTION-FREE! that's why they're so popular, and why they're called "mp3 players", and not "wma players", or "m4p players". that's another thing. it's M4P reelbigfish, not MP4! mp4's are Quicktime video files, m4p's are iTunes protected m4a's. you keep typing crazy stuff, newbs are gonna swarm to this site making "dumb posts" about converting video files...
ok, now that i've "cut thru" the hype, how bout some possible solutions? well, there's a few ways to go about your problem. the easiest would be to just download on a p2p service, but we'll cut that out since it's illegal to dL anything you don't own already, which bring up the point that you could buy from iTunes, then just download the songs in mp3 format on p2p legally
so on to solution 2: when you burn CD's and re-rip, you could use CD-RW's so that you don't waste a disc, then burn an mp3 CD-R, for permanence. that takes abit more time than normal, but saves you money in the long run.
something else to keep in mind, is that if you use iTunes 5 or earlier you can convert your m4p's to mp3's DIRECTLY, using jHymn. iTunes 6 and later not yet supported, but they're working on it.
if all this is just too much of a hassle, you could always just stick to buying CD's. you can get some older and even some new CD's on the cheap from eBay, and even Amazon allows individuals to sell new and used CD's thru them for cheaper than they charge. look for "xx used & new for $x.xx" on amazon below their price. i've gotten many CD's there for under $5, and used ones in EXCELLENT condition, too!
fyi, the one AND ONLY thing iTunes has going for it, is it's selection. i've found rare songs on there that i've been unable to find, even on p2p. plus if you only want ONE of an artist's songs, well, that's where music downloads shine.
one other thing to let you kids in on. tunebite is a program which can record live audio as it plays on your PC, and can automatically recognize when an encrypted wma or m4p file is being played, and capture it to mp3, unprotected wma, or ogg audio files. it costs about $17.90, but i'm sure you inventive folks can figure a way around that
by the way Enverex, if you know of a way to "un-DRM" wma's, i'd loveta hear it. i thought that all those older programs were no longer any good...
anyways good luck all
although, be warned, i have had it screw up on about 3 songs, not to bad, less than 1% failure, although, things ive learned, close napster and any other music playing app before using, set the file type access to wmp, otherwise it will screw up the licenses and not re-encode. (wont even play) this is one of those things that is best to let run over night.
it's barely noticeable, but if you turn the sound up loud enough, you might notice. it's really an audiophile thing; it's the difference between analog capture, and digital conversion...
ie. i just burned a flac audio file and a transcoded mp3 file, and played them in my home stereo, computer stereo, and car stereo, i couldnt notice any difference in sq. the flac was a little bit louder, but that is just recording levels.
I don't know of any way to remove the protection as none of them work anymore, but if you use a program that can record digitally you can do it that way which will leave you with raw audio, but you then need to encode it to something else. Programs like Cool Edit Pro, Creative Wave Studio, Goldwave, etc.
Heh, lots of peole say that, but I've noticed they are normally the ones that think 96Kbit tracks are fine etc etc... heh.
gotta agree with Enverex on this one. i stick to 192k myself personally
It's probably those years I listened to Metallica at insane volume levels that did it to me. See, bad taste does have consequences!
I should sue those Metallica guys. I still owe them one for Napster 1.0...
I can tell the difference between well encoded audio, and some of lesser standards, no, tunebite isnt a perfect image of the wma, but it comes REALLY close imho, and truthfully, the wma doesnt come close to the original recording or flac file.
QTFairUse6 for Windows. it will convert any m4p into an unprotected m4a, without re-encoding! plus, it's FREE (can't beat that price). version 2.5 should be the latest.
also for protected WMA's, we have fairuse4wm (v. 1.3). it does the same thing, only for WMA's (and WMV's, for that matter), and is also, yup, you guessed it...FREE!
google them to find, it's relatively simple, and free free free!
enjoy!
darkflux
In the meantime,
"Never seen, heard, nor smelled an issue that was so dangerous it couldn't be talked about." - Stephen Hopkins, delegate from Rhode Island, 1776.
as for FairUse4WM, it only works on files with a valid licence to play in the first place. that being said, it's not much different than Tunebite (other than HOW it operates).
additional comments welcome