MPEG4 Audio Files in FCP HD

What's the scoop on MPEG 4 audio Files and FCP HD? They don't play. I can't covert these to AIF (from Itunes) and I'm a little stuck. Any one have a suggestion. Thanks in advance. Terry

Nope- AC3 is not a current audio format for FCP. You are not allowed to use iTunes music in video production anyway.

The same for iTunes m4p - you're talking copyright protected material and forty lashes with a wet noodle if you are trying to use it.

Ian

No serious production here. I'm new with FCP and was just trying to figure out which audio files fcp would import. I'll note that I'm an asacp member so I can respect and appreciate the copyright heads up. thanks again. Terry

To beat this to death -
Another "flavor" of MP4 is AAC - a great codec to store audio in. It is space efficient and darned near lossless. To use clips in FCP from AAC, you can use Quicktime (pro) to produce an AIF copy. Use that copy in FCP.

Ian

You can also use iMovie to transfer songs from iTunes to a Quicktime movie file... just make sure you have some video in there or the copy-protection kicks in.

I'm not offering this to help anyone steal music, but there can sometimes be legit reasons for needing to do this.

The fact is, everybody uses copyrighted music in rough cuts. The thing that matters is that we get a proper chain of titles for the final product. Also, in many cases we need a way to do the conversion no matter what -- for example, a film I'm cutting now uses music by a dance duo whose members gave their permission, but it's still up to me to convert the files to try to get around the copyright protection on their discs.