Fair game
by Volker Weber
FairGame will convert the songs you bought on the iTunes Store to an unprotected format (using iTunes default encoder) and keep all the original metadata, lyrics and artwork
No more burning to CD and re-ripping to MP3.
Tags: drm+is+bad+for+the+customer
Comments
Love that tag.
Doesn't work for me.
Oh, and Yes, I did follow the two-step instructions.. ;)
It's a clever idea, and it was entertaining to watch the scripted iMovie conversion. But it doesn't work for me. I followed the directions, too, which is practically a miracle - I changed my Universal Access and iMovie prefs. But I get an AppleScript error (can't find item 1 of {}). Has anyone used this successfully?
By the way, I'm also a bit curious about the quality of the file they would wind up with. The app seemed to be importing the file into iMovie, then converting to WAV (then I get the error), then I guess it would have converted to iTunes default (MP3 in my case). Does anybody who know a lot more than I do about audio (which would be most readers of this site) have any comments about the effect of this technique on audio quality? No loss, marginal loss, enormous loss?
Yes, I know I should never have bought any protected songs. I only have a few, and I'd like to un-protect them because, well, DRM is obnoxious. I've seen a Windows app that will do the conversion, but I'm still waiting for a Mac app (because Windows is annoying), so that's why I tried this one out.
I have no "protected" songs, so I cannot try it. If the software converts to WAV and then encodes with the standard iTunes codec, then it is doing exactly what you would do when burning a CD.
As for the quality: There are folks who believe they can hear a gold plated power cable. :-)
I just bought an album from iTunes to check. It converts to WAV and then throws the error "can't find item 1 of {}"
I haven't found a way to import the WAV from my desktop, where it gets created. Bummer!
John, importing the WAV (if you really reach that stage) should be trivial.
Simple drag and drop on iTunes doesn't work?
Pieter, that imports it as a WAV file, which will play OK (one per song at about 50 MB per file) - the problem is to turn it into a somewhat smaller MP3...
John, am I missing something here? If you want to convert a WAV, AIFF or (unprotected) WMV (the last is only in iTunes Windoze), you simpy open the file as usual, then right-click to import it (thus converting it using what you have in your iTunes prefs, i.e. mp3 or AAC, varying quality types).
Ctrl-click the file: "Encode as MP3". The problem is that without Fairgame you are not transferring artwork.
When I import it into iTunes, it lands in the Movies library, and there isn't any menu point to convert to MP3 or anything else useful... Control-Click doesn't offer "encode as MP3" either. Very strange, but there you are!
.. in fact, although the file has a .WAV extension and plays the music OK, when I do "Get Info" it tells me it's a quicktime file, so something is definately not right here. Yes, vowe, I relaised I wouldn't get the artwork etc., but I hoped it save me burning a CD. I'm going to wait a day or two first and see if the developer fixes the problem which every seems to have. It doesn't make any difference if you set the import preferences to import MP3 or AAC by the way, the result is the same in both cases.
I still wait for a Windows app, doing the same.
I get the same applescript error, which I assume has something to do with the fact that iTunes thinks it's a video file. Perhaps someone more knowledgable on the subject can say whether this can be fixed via the file type/creator attributes. What I do at this point is use a file called Switch (http://www.nch.com.au/switch/) to batch convert the wav's to mp3's, then manually add to iTunes library and adjust the tags. It's a little cumbersome (more so than FairGame working properly), but at least it works.
Good luck!
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