Filed under: iTS, Software, Hacks, Tips and tricks
Use iMovie to remove iTMS DRM
This tip has apparently been around for quite a while, but the indispensable macosxhints just discovered it today, and I thought I'd share the love. It turns out that, using iMovie and at least one picture/video file, you can chose a couple of specific export options to crank out a DRM-free AIFF file from any of your iTMS songs. Bringing this file back into iTunes, of course, re-converts and compresses it to your bidding. It might be a roundabout solution, but if you can export more than one song per iMovie project (anyone care to try?), I bet this could turn out to be a bit easier than burning all those CDs.Check out macosxhints for the full instructions on using iMovie to de-DRM your tracks.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Rich said 8:19AM on 8-15-2006
I can't see Apple letting us use this work around for long, especially now that it's out in the open. I wouldn't be suprised if there is an iMovie update soon that stops this.
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Chris G. said 8:25AM on 8-15-2006
This is not a good solution. You end up losing quality in the process.
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Mark Moloney said 8:40AM on 8-15-2006
Still not as convenient as burning and reimporting via CD-RW...
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Felipe said 8:57AM on 8-15-2006
Man, David Chartier is the king of digging out old stuff...
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mike said 9:08AM on 8-15-2006
Q: Do you lose tags when re-importing, either from a cd-rw or via iMovie? That's the notion that keeps me from converting all my tracks to mp3. If the tags are lost in conversion is there a simple way to 'clone' the tags from the original file to the new file?
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Fraser Drew said 9:11AM on 8-15-2006
If you burn all the tracks from an album you don't lose tags, as it just sees it as a CD (as it finds out what CD it is with tacklengths etc.. but if its random tracks, then i have found you do!
I just use 1 CD-RW, so it is very cheap and reuseable, and doen't really take any time at all.
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mithras said 10:09AM on 8-15-2006
A reliable way to archive and burn iTMS video files would be very nice.
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ron g said 10:10AM on 8-15-2006
It is so stupid that this is being posted. Yeah, this tip has been around along time; so long that the actual usefulness is no longer there. You see, iMovie version 3 and below (along with QT version... whatever it was at the time) let you export your purchased music back out in the exact same ACC format - WITHOUT the DRM, WITHOUT re-conversion, WITHOUT any recompression!
This tip is completely useless and can be done with just about any audio program that use QT (ie: all of them), what is the point of calling out iMovie. Plus you still have a re-conversion process.
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Brandon Hays said 10:18AM on 8-15-2006
The real issue is that you will lose your tags this way. When burning & re-ripping a CD, iTunes asks if you'd like to overwrite the existing songs. Tags & even Album Art are retained (but be sure to back up your iTMS files before overwriting!).
So, until someone rebuilds jHYMN, this is still the fastest & simplest solution to de-DRM'ing your stuff.
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kevin said 10:30AM on 8-15-2006
ron, I think the bloggers here get paid per post, that's why this is here.
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ih8bg8s said 12:05PM on 8-15-2006
Don't you think, or at least I should think that someone could figure out a way to make an external drive "look" like a CD that can be burned to. Therefore you can do one burn session for all your music and one import session to bring it all back in.
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Sam said 12:22PM on 8-15-2006
So how long till someone writes an applescript to do this for all tracks on a downloaded "cd"?
potentially all tracks as they're downloaded?
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