Tue, 12 Sep 2006
Using Apple Products To Remove Apple's DRM
I'm a vocal opponent of any kind of
DRM. But yesterday I discovered a wonderful band named
Made Out Of Babies. I emailed them about buying their music online because I couldn't find it anywhere except through the iTunes Music Store. Sure enough, Neurot Recordings has an exclusive with Apple. So...I signed up for an account and paid them 99 cents to download the first track off their album.
Before I start with the details. I would like you to
download this track for free from my web site. It is in the unrestricted ogg/vorbis format, despite the original format being Apple's "protected mpeg-4". And now...the irony.
I used Apple products to remove the restrictions from Apple's restricted format. Step by step:
- Open iMovie HD and create a new project
- Select the Media window and the Audio tab within that window
- Find your restricted song in the Library section of the top pane
- Drag the song to the bottom of the timeline
- Select the Photos tab within the Media window
- Drag a photo to the top of the timeline
- On the timeline, slide the playhead to the end of the audio waveform and note the length of the song
- Deselect "Ken Burns Effect" in the photo settings and make the length of the photo the length of the song
- Click on the Share menu and select "Share".
- Pull down the tab next to "Compress movie for" and select "Expert Settings"
- Click Share
- Pull down the tab next to "Export" and select "Sound to Wave"
- Click Options
- Pull down the tab next to "Rate" and select "44.100"
- Click OK and click Save
You will now have a DRM free version of the song you purchased from the iTunes Music Store. It will be in the uncompressed WAV format, which you can compress using other non-restricted formats like mp3 or ogg/vorbis.
Granted, this is not a practical implementation for cleaning large amounts of ITMS purchases. Personally I would recommend not buying music through this retailer. Remember though, if you happened to buy some music in that format and would like to share it with a friend, or use it with portable players other than the iPod, this is one solution. The other (admittedly more simple) way is to burn the files to a CD-RW and rip that to another format.
posted at: 18:30 | path:
/hacking |
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