Mp4 to Mp3, or vice versa

July 8, 2005 10:37 PM

CD burning emergency: Itunes files to Mp3s, or vice versa. Must be done by morning! Help!

Shit. Making a CD for a funeral, which must be done in approximately four hours (if I'm to sleep.)

I've downloaded the family's preferred songs from ITunes, but I can't seem to burn them on to a CD with the mp3s I already have stored in WMP.

Could be that I'm missing something.

Can someone tell me how to get both the mp3s and Itunes mp4s onto a single CD (preferably with software I already have: WMP, Itunes, Nero, Roxio).

Thanks for helping in a pinch.

posted by mudpuppie to technology (7 comments total)

I don't use iTunes, but from what I understand of it you have to do this:

Burn the AAC files onto CD from iTunes. Turn around and rip those off that CD and onto your hard drive with something like dBpowerAMP. Now use another CD and burn everything together.
posted by trinarian at 10:46 PM on July 8, 2005

Option 2, less preferable. Use dBpowerAmp to convert mp3's over to AAC format. You'll loose fidility, but it might work.
posted by trinarian at 10:51 PM on July 8, 2005

Is the problem you're having that iTunes won't recognize your WMP mp3s?

Open iTunes, select the song you downloaded and click on the Advanced tab. One of the options is Convert Selection To Mp3. Once you have everything in the same file format you should be able to burn it with Roxio. I've never had to do this myself, but that's the advice I've seen given. Good luck.
posted by cali at 11:12 PM on July 8, 2005

Are you trying to make an Audio CD or a data CD with MP3 audio on it?

If the former, iTunes should have a setting (in the Burning section of the Preferences) for Audio CD, which will take MP3 files and m4p files and burn an actual Redbook Audio CD from them.

If the latter, you must convert the protected AAC (m4p) files to MP3 so that all of the files on the data CD are MP3 files.

The easiest way to accomplish this is using jHymn to grab your iTunes keys and decrypt the m4p files, and convert them to mp3. It will do both, you just have to change the settings to do so.
posted by tomierna at 11:13 PM on July 8, 2005

http://www.bpurcell.org/blog/index.cfm?mode=entry&entry=1036

I've been doing this for about six months, and it works like a charm. Good luck.
posted by davidmsc at 1:15 AM on July 9, 2005

Well, jHymn gives a GUI to do all of the nasty, and will go recursively into an iTunes library.

It strips the DRM to make an M4P into and MP4, or if you select the appropriate checkboxen, will convert into MP3 or AIFF or whatnot.

The best thing is that it will download your keys automagically - you don't have to have an iPod connected or use the Windows version like you did with the old HYMN.

jHymn will save you some steps, for sure.
posted by tomierna at 9:01 AM on July 9, 2005

Once you've decrypted the protected files, use the free Burrrn. You can mix and match just about every audio file and it'll do all the converting so you can have an audio CD.
posted by Monochrome at 5:53 PM on July 9, 2005