M4A Conversion

okay techies.. heres a quick inquiry.

I have M4a files. I want them to be mP3 files I can play on my mp3/cd player in the car.

Ideas?

okay techies.. heres a quick inquiry.

I have M4a files. I want them to be mP3 files I can play on my mp3/cd player in the car.

Ideas?

19 thoughts on “M4A Conversion”

  1. Shareware

    I downloaded a piece of shareware called ImTOO WMA MP3 Converter. Works like a charm.

    — Ben

    1. Yup!

      It works

      You can pay 19.99 to get the batch convert. The shareware only does 2 songs at a time. It works well and with batch convert you can just convert everything right away.

      Oh.. BTW: EphPod is a program that interfaces with your ipod and lets you put songs on and take songs off onto your computer at will.

      Visit the Official Justin Timpane Website Music, Acting, and More! http://www.timpane.com

      1. Oooo… if what you say is

        Oooo…

        if what you say is true you’ve made me a much happier man…

  2. If you have m4a files,

    If you have m4a files, aren’t they in ITunes? Won’t ITunes burn a mp3 cd for you?

    My $.02 Weed

    1. Not MP3

      No, once you have something in m4a format, the only way to persuade iTunes to unlock it is to burn a regular audio CD, and re-rip to MP3 or AAC. You don’t lose a lot of quality, as m4a is basically AAC with encryption, so it’s sort of garbage-in-garbage-out, but you have to make sure your bitrates match or you might get some compression artifacts.

      That’s how I unlock my iTunes, though: burn an audio CD, then re-rip to MP3. Works fine.

      —
      Matthew P. Barnson

      1. Huh

        I thought m4a files weren’t encrypted. I thought the m4p files were the encrypted ones you buy, and the m4a files were the ones you import or import another way. I thought iTunes would burn an mp3 CD if you only pick songs you haven’t bought. Once you include a song you bought (and therefore is encrypted) an mp3 CD is out of the question.

        An m4a file is just an mp4 song with a different extension.

        I don’t think any program out there converts m4p files.

        My $.02 Weed

        1. You may be right…

          You may be right. I may be crazy.

          (But it just may be a lunatic you’re looking for…)

          —
          Matthew P. Barnson

          3. He’s pretty sharp

            I don’t know, I think he’s sharp. As sharp as knives knives knives. And so gung ho to lay down those lines!

            At least we’ll all go down together, eh?

            —
            Matthew P. Barnson

          4. Jungle Rock

            In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep. Through the jungle of doubt to a river so deep.

            Poor Alexa. To have Christie’s genes but look like Billy.

            My $.02 Weed

          6. Daniel

            Daniel,

            You’re just a candle in the wind.

            What’s the term for this. Mixing metaphorical lyrics?

            My thesis could be a song they wrote together. Just like Michael Caine-Gene Hackman movies.

            Aw sh*t, George Clinton!

            My $.02 Weed

  3. Love/hate relationship with Itunes

    On a related note, I can’t decide whether I love or despise my Ipod.

    On one hand, Itunes is so super convenient. I have no trouble paying 99 cents for a song, and CERTAINLY no trouble paying 2 bucks for an episode of Lost that I can watch with no commercials. Also, the IPod Video’s capabilities are amazing. You’d never believe that a two inch square could produce such clarity and be so easy to watch.

    However, that brilliant bastard Steve Jobs decreed that anything downloaded from Itunes ONLY works with Ipod. Which means that even if I *wanted* to switch from an Ipod to an MP3 player that, say, has a replacable battery and doesn’t crap out after two years because it has no spinning parts… even if I wanted this, I really can’t make the switch. I’ve downloaded so many iTunes files that I’m pretty much wed to my iPod.

    Sometimes this feels like a marriage I’d love to end, especially when things stop working and she is completely unclear as to communicating what’s wrong. But a divorce at this point would mean that she’d automatically get custody of some 3000 .m4a musical children just because I didn’t read the pre-nup close enough.

    Sure, I could burn and re-rip them, but I just don’t have the time or energy to fight an individual custody battle for all 3000 of the little buggers. And so the marriage continues. The worst part is she knows I can’t leave her, so there’s no motivation for her to help work out the bugs in the relationship.

    On the plus side, she did go out and get herself a nice new set of features that really are a lot of fun to play with.

    Also she’s black now.

    … and this is what it’s like to realize you’ve taken the metaphor one step over the line…

    1. Totally Unrelated

      Rowan,

      What’s the difference between a Ferrari and a pile of dead babies?

      I don’t have a Ferrari in my garage right now.

      I figured you’d enjoy that one

      My $.02 Weed

      1. Wow…

        What does it say about me that I DO enjoy that one?

        Ask Justin to tell you about dropping chicken on the floor sometime…

    2. My heart goes out to you!

      Maybe I’m just a sissy, but I think I cried real tears when I read the story about your unhappy marriage. My unhappy marriage is EXACTLY the same as yours, only I have 3,642 m4a musical children . . .

      Your story compelled me to go through the nonsense of registering just so I could reply. After all, it seems so unfair that we surfers can just breeze along and find the answers to all of our problems because somebody out there somewhere had the same problem . . .

      Maybe I’ve found help for you and me and all the other sufferers of bad marriages!!

      I found Easy CD-DA Extractor at this link. http://www.poikosoft.com/ The link on the right says “click to download”. It was absolutely free and it does batch conversions! Yippee! The other one I found was a trial version that only did two at a time. It worked all right, but if you wanted to do batches, you had to pay $20 for the full version. Yuck!

      Somebody else suggested renaming the m4a to mp4 and bringing them into QuickTime and exporting them as WAV — but that requires QuickTime Pro, which costs $30! Ouch! Alas, I am a hopeless cheapskate! But I’m so sick of throwing money away for a product you don’t know and simply can’t trust.

      I don’t think this will work for the locked files–the ones you purchase from i-Tunes–they have to be unlocked first. I’ve always burned them off to CD immediately after I purchase them and then store those CDs in my storage shed to protect me against house fires or computer crashes or theft or any other tragedy that may occur. I never thought that was against the rules. Although I never thought about importing them from those CDs back into my computer to thwart the Apple five-computer rule . . .

      Anyway, here’s another take on the fairness/legality/practicality issues. These guys claim to have a way to break the Apple locks and allow people to convert m4p to M4a: http://www.hymn-project.org/

      So I guess that’s my contribution to the rebellion. Gee, I never thought of myself as a revolutionary!

      Here’s the rest of my research: http://forums-riovolution.com/index.php?s=7ac47f9e9f0b3413c7d5cc9c9f04f540&showtopic=17329 http://www.osxhax.com/archives/000046.html

      1. Registration…

        You didn’t have to register to reply… just make sure you do the “captcha” (the little picture of text) correctly, and you’re in luck.

        —
        Matthew P. Barnson

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