Editing Skating music

[DallasSkater]

I learned from you guys about audacity site for skating music editing. Thought I would give it a whirl for the Christmas program I am planning on participating in. I pulled all back threads on this topic but can't figure out what I am doing wrong!

I have successfully loaded the music selection and can find everything to edit it just fine. But when I attempt to listen back by hitting the play button, it goes at such a hyper speed I am unable to tell what I have done. I have read every page of their site and all the tutorial but this problem is not even mentioned...

Anyone know anything about this? I am so frustrated I am about ready to turn over the 40 bucks to the guy who did my freeskate music...but thought I would at least ask first. Maybe it is a simple solution? eeek!

Thanks in advance for any suggestions:giveup:

[dbny]

Did you have the problem when you first played your music, before doing any editing? What format is your file?

I have only used Audacity once, just last week, and did not have that problem. Looking at the controls, though, I do see under "Effects" that you can speed up or slow down the music. I tried it and did get the effect you describe. Is it possible that you accidently speeded it up? Have you tried fiddling with that to slow it down?

[DallasSkater]

Thanks for the response...yep, fiddled with it...and it does make it slow down somewhat but even at low setting it still sounds like chipmunks...It was downloaded from I tunes.

Thanks for taking time to brain storm..good thought. Will fiddle more tomorrow.

[dbny]

It was downloaded from I tunes.


Aha! Does the file type happen to be m4p? If so, you need to convert it to mp3 for Audacity to handle it properly. There are free conversion utilities you can download. Since I never, ever intend to buy anything from iTunes again, I used a free 14 day trial of Protected Music Converter (http://www.wma-mp3.com/). It downloaded fast, installed quickly, and was easy to use.

[SkatingOnClouds]

I find that I can only get meaningful stuff by using a CD ripper and saving it as a WAV file, then importing to Audacity. I haven't suceeded in uploading to Audacity from itunes yet.

[Sessy]

iTunes has DRM (digital rights management, sometimes jokingly referred to as digital restrictions management) built into the system in the shape of FairPlay, which is meant to do exactly that: ensure that you cannot edit, modify, cut, or replicate the music, spread it over more than 5 computers, etc.

Nowadays SOME music (only the ones from artists with music corporation EMI) is also available DRM-encryption-free, but it's still in AAC where as most editing software works with mp3. Same thing if you use a hack for iTunes (which would be illegal), such as PlayFair or a number of other hacks, you'd get the thing restrction-free, but still in aac.

However if you have a protected file, I'm afraid you might be out of luck (although sometimes you can pay extra to get the protection removed, again, if it's originally from EMI).


Now when you rip something from a CD, you get a DRM-free file, because Sony's the only one who's tried selling DRM-protected CD's recently, and we all know how "well" that went... And this is exactly why the boss of iTunes is so upset with that the music industry requires iTunes to sell in DRM-protected format, where as things can still easily be ripped off cd's and put on the internet!

[DallasSkater]

Oh you guys are brilliant! I bet that is the problem. Will try again tonight with the link you provided. Sure would be nice to save money on the music cutting. It would also be nice to have it cut to exactly what I want! Thanks!:bow:

[Rusty Blades]

I have been using Advanced WMA Workshop and like it so much I paid for it :mrgreen: I chose it because it allowed me to convert all the standard formats to MP3. I keep my music library in MP3 because the files are about 1/10 the size of WAV files.

[dbny]

However if you have a protected file, I'm afraid you might be out of luck (although sometimes you can pay extra to get the protection removed, again, if it's originally from EMI).


I guess you hadn't read my post. There is lots of software out there to remove the protection, and I recommended a free trial of one that I used successfully:

Aha! Does the file type happen to be m4p? If so, you need to convert it to mp3 for Audacity to handle it properly. There are free conversion utilities you can download. Since I never, ever intend to buy anything from iTunes again, I used a free 14 day trial of Protected Music Converter (http://www.wma-mp3.com/). It downloaded fast, installed quickly, and was easy to use.

[jak0203]

For songs you download for itunes, simply burn them to a music CD, then rip them back to your computer and the protections are gone. This wastes a CD, but it's free other than that. You can set itunes to rip your music as an MP3 instead of AAC by going to: Edit, Preferences, select the advanced tab at the top, then click the importing tab, then under "import using" select MP3 encoder.

Anyways, once you've got it as an MP3, you can do anything you want to it.