iTunes Protected Files

[Rossco]

I just purchased the end theme to Saw III on iTunes for use on a uni animation. But I can't use the file at all as its protected. And comes in a m4p format which can't even be converted to mp3 or aac so I can't use it!

Where as if I bought the CD I could do with it what I like!

Any way around this as I can't find the mp3 anywhere to download which is annoying the hell outta me now!

[Baseley09]

Loop a lline out to line in lead and record it on your pc?

[Rossco]

Is that just a 3.5mil male to male connection you mean? Cause I think I have one of them somewhere!

[VR46]

Yep it is.

[babs]

Or if you want a fiddly and wasteful way of doing it, burn the track to cd in itunes, then rip it back out as mp3.

[Rossco]

Legends!

Work a treat, cheers!

[funkydan]

Or if you want a fiddly and wasteful way of doing it, burn the track to cd in itunes, then rip it back out as mp3.

Really? Does that work?

[babs]

Yup, once it's on CD it's a plain CD audio track, there's no file format information held.

[funkydan]

It doesn't reproduce the mp4 protected files on the disc? What's the point of itunes DRM thing then? Sorry, I'm not having a go - I just can't believe that their protection is that simple to circumnavigate! Will have to try this tonight...

[Magnakai]

You can also use DoubleTwist to make them into normal MP3s. It's made by DVD Jon, the guy who broke the DVD encryption code and the iTunes encryption code a couple of years ago.

I've never tried it, because I've never bought anything from iTunes, but it apparently works.

[Fei Fong Wong]

It doesn't reproduce the mp4 protected files on the disc? What's the point of itunes DRM thing then? Sorry, I'm not having a go - I just can't believe that their protection is that simple to circumnavigate! Will have to try this tonight...

To stop file sharing I suppose. Let's face it not everyone is going to burn their purchased songs to CD and then re-rip and encode them to share on the internet. DRM is being phased out now anyway thankfully. The record labels seem to have cottoned on to the fact that people don't share what they purchased, the share what is already being shared and inevitably that comes from topsites.

You also lose quality in burning and re-ripping anyway. You are essentially unpacking the .m4p file (a lossy audio file format) to uncompressed PCM audio for CD and then re-ripping and encoding the song in MP3 (another lossy audio file format). While the iTunes .m4p file will have been encoded from a quality source to begin with you can never get that original quality back and encoding/compressing the audio again only serves to take more data away therefore deteriorating the quality further. This is true for any lossy audio file. The sound quality of any transcoded file will always be worse than the lossy source file.

I would question why anyone would want to waste their money purchasing an album on iTunes at a 128kbps bit-rate so they could burn it on CD anyway. Better to buy the CD copy and then rip it in a decent quality for your computer/iPod.

[EvilBoris]

I've used a piece of software called Hymn to remove the DRM from my Itunes files.

http://hymn-project.org/

It literally strips the DRM out leaving you with no extra encoding or anything silly.

My PC has been reformatted so many times that I've almost exceeded the amount of times I can reauthorise it.

[Rossco]

Wow loads of ways to do this then! At least I can always refer back to here for future but the recording it straight from the PC worked a treat and quality still seemed top notch!