Problems burning a CD (m4p Protected files)

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Problems burning a CD (m4p Protected files)

I purchased my itunes songs and they came in aac format and they were burnable to a CD. I recently installed Mp3 Maker Deluxe by Magix. Somehow all my purchased tunes (and NOT those ripped from existing CDs) are suddenly in mp4 protected format. I don't know if the installation of the new software is relevant. I did NOTHING to convert file formats.

My question is not so much "What happened?" but "How do I fix it?" I need to remove protection, then I know I can burn a cd and rip those files back into itunes in aac format. The question is how do I unprotect these files?

Dell Desktop Windows XP

Posted on Dec 29, 2005 6:36 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 29, 2005 6:54 PM in response to Bill Staas

QUOTE
"My question is not so much "What happened?" but "How do I fix it?" I need to remove protection, then I know I can burn a cd and rip those files back into itunes in aac format. The question is how do I unprotect these files?"

aac is a mp4 format.
In itunes, you can select a song(s) and right click, then choose "convert selection to MP3" this should help a good deal. As for unprotecting those files without converting to MP3 I haven’t the slightest.

hope this helps.

Custom AMD 64 3000+ Windows XP Pro SP2 I am OverClocking

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Answer 2

Bill Staas Author

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Dec 30, 2005 4:50 AM in response to Brentipoo

QUOTE
"My question is not so much "What happened?" but "How
do I fix it?" I need to remove protection, then I
know I can burn a cd and rip those files back into
itunes in aac format. The question is how do I
unprotect these files?"

aac is a mp4 format.
In itunes, you can select a song(s) and right
click, then choose "convert selection to MP3" this
should help a good deal. As for unprotecting those
files without converting to MP3 I haven’t the
slightest.

hope this helps.

Custom
AMD 64 3000+ Windows XP Pro SP2 I
am OverClocking

Thanks, but I can't do anything with the files until they are un-protected. No cd burning, no format changing.

I think perhaps a DRM (Digital Recording Media) license provision associated with itunes has been invoked(?) and this has caused the files to be protected? Is this possible?

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Answer 3

Dec 30, 2005 10:02 AM in response to Bill Staas

Songs that you purchase from the iTunes Music Store are always downloaded in AAC format, inside MP4 files that are protected by a DRM mechanism called Fairplay. Your files have always been ".m4p". Nothing has changed. You should be able to burn these songs to a CD using iTunes.

I don't really know anything about your "Mp3 Maker Deluxe" software, but if you are trying to burn your iTunes Music Store songs with it, it is unlikely that it will work. Because of Fairplay, songs that you purchase from the iTunes Music Store are designed to work only with iTunes.

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Answer 4

Bill Staas Author

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Dec 30, 2005 11:54 AM in response to SpaceMonkey

Thanks..through a lot of reading I have lerned that .m4p and .aac are the same thing; but the protected files can't be burned to a CD anywhere including iTunes. I may have triggered 'Fairplay', but I have no idea how. Can I assume that once Fairplay protects the files...there is nothing I can do to get them back. (Note that the songs still play on my computer, I just can't make a CD via ANY software).

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Answer 5

Dec 30, 2005 12:07 PM in response to Bill Staas

Fairplay isn't something that you "trigger." It just describes the rules about what you can and can't do with the files. It is always "active" (if you want to think of it that way) from the moment you buy the song from the iTunes Music Store.

You should be able to burn .m4p files to either an Audio CD or a Data CD in iTunes. Burning to an MP3 CD will probably not work (although an MP3 CD is theoretically no different than a Data CD, iTunes for some reason lists it separately in its preferences).

Is it only .m4p files that you are unable to burn, or is it all files?

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Answer 6

Bill Staas Author

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Dec 31, 2005 9:09 AM in response to SpaceMonkey

Thanks for your reply. Only m4p files are unburnable. The same files I could burn a cd with until the word 'protected' appeared. Then cd burner in the itunes program tells me it cannot produce a cd using a protected file. And I have no clue how to unprotect it, because I don't know how it got protected in the first place.

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