IMPORTING MUSIC FROM ITUNES

Hi,
I downloaded a song from Itunes to use as a temp track to cut to but apparently all the songs in the Itunes music store are protected files and can't be converted. Is there any way around this? I don't want to buy the entire album to use one song.
Thanks

Two ways I know of:

Analog audio cable between two Macs.

Burn a Music CD and import/convert that.

Koz

Two more ways:

1. Import into iMovie and then re-export into an AIFF.

2. Use an in-computer recording program such as WireTap Pro.

I burned a CD and imported back into Itunes and tried to convert it and still got the "Cannot convert because file is protected" message. Am I missing a step?

Also can you please explain the process for the second option? I have a G4 laptop and a G5 Quad.

Thanks.

<<<imported back into Itunes >>>

Did you actually Import with Import Options set, or did you let iTunes grab it before you could do anything? iTunes conversion of music is an Import function.

Koz

<<<WireTap Pro.>>>

I suspect this is the Mac version of Total Recorder for the PC. The programs load an internal driver that makes the computer think it's playing music out to the speaker, when in fact, it's actually going to a file.

The downside of both of these is that they're real time. It takes the whole show length to capture the show.

They may also easily mess up video sound sync, since they're both an additional layer between you and the show.

Koz

Burn the CD in iTunes, then drag the AIFF file from the burned disk to a hard drive in your system, then import to FCP. I do this and it works every time.

I did burn a CD. It won't let me convert it. The file on the burned CD is a .m4p. I tried reimporting it into Itunes hoping it would convert it to an aiff since that is what my preferences for importing are set to -- but no luck.

My import options preferences are set to convert to .aiff upon importing, but it still imported it as a protected AAC file. When I burned a CD of it, it changed it to a .m4p (or is that the same thing?) I've tried re-importing it from the CD back into Itunes thinking that since my preferences are set to convert to aiff upon importing that it would work, but nope.

I think the trick here is to make sure you burn to CD as AIFF. In your burning preferences in iTunes, make sure the Disk Format is "Audio CD". Then burn it again and it should show on the CD in Finder as yoursong.aif. Now it should work in FCP, although I prefer to convert it to 48 kHz first. Be sure you copy the file from the CD to a logical place on your hard drive before importing into FCP, otherwise it wll always try to reference the CD when you play the timeline, and you won't want that.

I have a question about the iMovie approach. I tried this with a downloaded song, brought it into iMovie without incident, it showed on the timeline as full length, then I exported it and it was a file as big as you would expect, with reported running time what it should be ... but it was 5 minutes of dead silence. When I went back to iMovie I found that it was dead silence there as well (hadn't listened to it in iMovie before this). I found that my downloaded song showed as slightly grayed out in the iMovie timeline, while another unprotected cut was full color. Anybody know more about this? (For those who are going to ask, yes it played fine in iTunes and on the CD I later burned).

Scott

Yee Haw -- That worked. Thanks Scott and everybody.

I don't waist CD's when I need a song from ITunes. I take the Audio Out jacks to my speakers and connect to my DV decks audio input, then I down load the song to tape and use that as my Input to FCP. If I want the song on a CD, I export an AIFF file to the desktop and then to "Toast"
Al
Edit Overload

Well, of course - NO one bothered to mention the RIAA and the problems shelly might get herself into by using protected music in a video project.

Besides we are a professional web forum that needs to help educate folks as well as help them. This is why Apple has provided Soundtrack Pro, to allow us to create music for projects that won't get us into hot water.

This is not a funny thing to get mixed up into and the RIAA has been merciless in tracking down people who don't even own a computer and charging them for downloading music and sharing it.

What every you do - DON'T exhibit this at a public meeting place or anyplace that someone sympathetic to the RIAA cause might get an earfull.`

I'm usually the first one to warn against piracy, but in this case Shelley's made it clear from the onset that it was temp music. And that's a fact of life in the film business. The record industry doesn't go after this use because no director or producer will get the rights for a song to use in a film *before* having tried to cut it together with the image first.

But yes -- don't share your music. It's foolish and unfair to the artists. And if you end up using the music in the film, for any kind of exhibition or distribution (putting it on a website counts), you *must* get both sync and master rights first.

<<<I downloaded a song from Itunes>>>

Remember that? Doesn't this entitle you to use the song on five different computers and listen to it as many times as you wish?

Koz