Mac is chafing me.

August 18, 2006 11:27 PM

Why does my mac (G4) refuse to play some of the songs that I've downloaded from legitimate music sites on the internet?

These songs such as "Beat Up Cars" by Moonlight Towers, which I downloaded from their website into a quicktime file, will play directly from my computer's speakers, but won't transfer to my ipod or play over airtunes. In the middle of a mix my computer (playing through airtunes) will switch to the computer's speakers instead of playing through my stereo via wifi. It's extremely frustrating. Is this some kind of licensiing thing?

Is my only option to get the songs into my ipod and over airtunes to burn thems to a CD then re-upload them to my itunes. Seems crazy, no?

posted by catfishjohn to computers & internet (8 comments total)

do save as source, not save as quicktime movie. then it will be an mp3 and it should load right into itunes.
posted by joeblough at 11:35 PM on August 18, 2006

I've had a problem where an MP3 file is marked in the Finder as a Quicktime movie rather than an MP3 file, and then iTunes doesn't treat it like a normal music file.

In the Finder, does the file show up with a Quicktime document icon or an iTunes document icon? And if you do a Get Info inside iTunes, what does it say under 'Kind'?

If it looks like a Quicktime file, try this. Do a Get Info on the file in the Finder, and under 'Open with' choose iTunes. Then re-import the file into iTunes, and see what it does.

If it's not an MP3 file at all (for example, a WMA file), you may need to convert it to a native MP3 or AAC file before it'll transfer onto your iPod. In iTunes, select the song and from the Advanced menu choose 'Convert selection to MP3/AAC'.
posted by chrismear at 11:39 PM on August 18, 2006

I'm definitely saving them as "source", and the songs show up on my desktop as MP3 files with the quicktime logo. I guess airtunes doesn't support quicktime songs? Seems strange.

To clarify, these songs play on itunes, but won't transfer to my pod or play over airtunes.
posted by catfishjohn at 11:54 PM on August 18, 2006

hmm. the "beat up cars" file above is definitely an mp3. there's no such thing as a "quicktime" mp3 vs. iTunes mp3. there's just an association in the finder between mp3 files and the Quicktime Player application, thus the file has a quicktime logo on the icon. this has never stopped me from importing mp3s into quicktime or loading them onto the iPod.

when you "get info" on the file in iTunes, what does it say about the mp3 bitrate?

a friend of mine did a lot of hacking on airtunes, and if i remember correctly, it only knows how to play .m4a or AIFF. however, i would expect macos to transparently transcode the audio file to the right format.
posted by joeblough at 12:26 AM on August 19, 2006

Control click the icon of the sound file and when you see "open with>" select iTunes. That may convert it from its association with quicktime.
Alternately, you might be able to import it into iTunes from the File menu command using import. YMMV.
posted by bach at 7:49 AM on August 19, 2006

Right-click/conrol click on the file in iTunes and select "convert to mp3/aac." It'll transcode to whatever makes iPod happy.

IME, it should have handled it fine. It could be an encoding error on their end, but that 'convert to mp3' should take it to whatever iTunes expects.
posted by neustile at 8:32 AM on August 19, 2006

Renewed my faith in Mac. Thanks.
posted by catfishjohn at 10:27 AM on August 19, 2006

>>Why does my mac (G4) refuse to play some of the songs that I've downloaded from legitimate music sites on the internet?< br>
in my professional opinion, this is the work of The Beast trying to enforce you to obtain illegal mp3's via p2p networks.
posted by willmillar at 1:42 PM on August 19, 2006