I second Glenn's response. It's not fair to blame the Mac, Apple, iTunes, FCP or any of the many options available in the PC arena either. It is all because the of the ridiculous circus that DRM has become.

The DRM is imposed by the recording industry to prevent you from doing exactly what you are trying to do with the protected file....well, really it is to prevent 'sharing' but synching and mastering into alternate media can be construed as a form of that.

The answer to this dilemma, as posted above, is really quite simple for those 'in the know', but it is not all that easy to come by in some places because of the potential liability percieved in sharing such information where the RIAA bloodhounds can track it.

Personally, I don't use any DRM media for client work as I don't see this as fair liability to myself, my clients, or contracted artists...but I do frequently make little home movies, or photo slideshows of my daughter that I like to play for my family...and I sometimes find and use DRM music for this purpose, but just to eliminate the hassle, I routinely just find a short block of time to go over the recently added DRM files and batch burn and re-import them to avoid any 'gotchas' on a per-project basis....just being prepared makes editing smoother in the long run.
-Jon

actually, u CAN import aiff files into Sf and Vegas the only issue with doing that is that the system in use must have the license for said soundtrack. os tof the time, when clients provide music via email with DRM imposed, i either ask them for their password or an alternative means if theyre wierd about their password.. ANYWAYS...
Being that the track itself must be llicesend through itunes, as the file is opened, DRM is triggered through itunes and voia, license visible, waveform tweakable.

My comment on Mac is not a platform issue or bias, its a comment on the fact that Mac users dont really have much of a choice when it comes to NLE's let alone mp3 or file management like Media Manager. There also the issue of convergance from one format to another, being that in a windows system, i can downlaod the free "rightclickmp3" program and run full batch mp3 conversion without so much as a twitch

"The DRM is imposed by the recording industry to prevent you from doing exactly what you are trying to do with the protected file....well, really it is to prevent 'sharing' but synching and mastering into alternate media can be construed as a form of that."
I hear you, however as some countries allow for licensing of said material which can be used in the ways as described, then DRm protection means jack and these circumventions can and should be disabled in these situations. This is where reverse engineering comes to play and alternative means (be they legal or not) are used. As some countries allow for the use of said licensed material, so the use of this is obviously not illegal, however in countries such as the US, then it would be illegal.

IMO the need to burn music to Cd then to re-rip back to PC is a waste of time... id rahter just browse the torrents and download what i need

This is one fo the reasons I refer to the whole DRM thing as a total circus. I often wish the industry in the US could look at what the Austrailian market does for licensing...it seems much more practical.
-Jon

personally, i use the "render out of imovie's timeline straight into an aiff file" method, not the CD-burning method. then import to FCP. as workarounds go, this is one of the easiest! there's no waste, and it doesn't take much time, just a minute or two, so this idea that mac users are spending countless wasted hours on audio conversions is simply off-base. mac actually gives you the tools to do this for free, it's the instruction manual which is absent (and the source of my rantings)...but really, i rarely even do this, primarily for home movie use. for commercial video or for publicly published web video, i simply use my legally-purchased music library. there's so much cheapie (or free) music out there, it's mostly a waste of energy to violate copyright laws....

i agree that licensing in the US is waaaay behind the digital revolution, and reforms are in order and are far too long in coming...

p.s. Jon--what exactly *does* the australian licensing market do that is better? (i'm highly convinced that most anything is better than the current US licensing arrangement, glacial, dinosaur, inefficient)... curious....

" so this idea that mac users are spending countless wasted hours on audio conversions is simply off-base."
Not off base, its just different and not as streamlined. Its not a mac thing... Your workaround described would work quite well, so please dont think that im "attacking" macs, im not.. hell i could go on about Premiere with its audio conforming... hell i can ramble on about any NLE but in this case, with DRM its a different story altogether.
These "workarounds" shouldnt need to exist IMO

as for australias system of licensing, we pay a yearly fee to use said licensed music in any mechanical means we see fit, whether it be sourced from our own database of ownership or whether a client "loans' us the music for "their" presentations. So long as its for private use, theres no issue with using the music

You can change the preferences to burn either an "MP3 CD" or "Data CD" that could eleviate the need to burn a bonified CD then re-"rip" it. You might be able to burn an "MP3 CD" and simply drag and drop the files right from the CD.

i simply open the mp3 in quicktime pro and export to aiff. no big deal.

best of luck.

-=aj

You can use all your DRM music in Imovie with no problem. Only FCP stops you. I guess they figure you aren't going to be doing much more than home stuff with Imovie so it's ok. But FCP is normally used in high end productions and therefore they decided to block out DRM stuff.

-gb=