Converting to Aiff files
 

I just bought a song off of itunes and was going to make a little funny video for my family.

I usually can convert these to Aiff so that I can use them in Final Cut Express but it says the song I want to convert is protected.
Anyone know how I can convert it anyways?

I honestly don't think there would be anything wrong about changing this file as I bought the music for private use and plan on editing it for private use.

One method is to burn the song to CD in cd audio format. You can then access the CD while in the editor to bring the song back into FCE which should automatically turn it into AIFF.

-gb-

I'm not sure whether that would work.. have you tried? I thought Apple's DRM software put limits on what could be done with the CD's you burn. If that fails you might have to capture it as analog from your CD player, iPod or computer.

Yes Boyd, I have actually done that. DRM isn't supported in good old cd audio format files AFAIK. But keep in mind that the file will go through two encoding processes, once on the way out, and once on the way back in so there will be some quality loss involved. I was trying to do the same thing as the original poster and this was the only workaround I could find.

Interestingly enough, that limitation doesn't show up in iPhoto. I can use any iTunes song I want as a musical slideshow background. Don't know about iMovie or iDVD. But FCP doesn't allow it.

-gb-

Thanks - I did not know that! :-)

Use Imovie
 

Another way of converting the protected file is to open up Imovie and under the audio tab grab the song from your itnues library and drop it on your timeline. Then under file select share, quicktime, expert settings, audio as aiff. Or if you have an unlimited supply of cd's just burn the song to cd and recapture it off the cd.

both of these methods work, but outputting to aiff from the imovie timeline, using the expert settings, has the advantage of being lossless....also the advantage of not wasting a CD just to burn a song for conversion....

i usually use QT Pro and all you do is open the song up in QT( do FILE>OPEN then in finder do a search for the song and when the mp3 file comes up that you want choose that) then in QT do export and then sound to AIFF.

wiretap is a good app for dealing with this kind of stuff. the free demo version will do what you need. it basically just records (in realtime) whatever sound your system is playing. in the prefs, you can select the file type and stuff. for a dv movie, you'd want 16bit stereo 48khz aiff.

That's good advice Nate! thanks! I tried the aforementioned tip of trying to get it out from imovie but it said that protected files can't be exported without pictures with it. I ended up burning a disc and putting it back in itunes and then converted it without problems to aiff.

It's a shame that they have to interfere with how I want to use a product I bought! That's like Head and Shoulders not allowing me to to wash my hands with it after I bought it!

the easy workaround for the required accompanying images in the imovie timeline is to make a black freeze frame and set it for the duration of your music....