acc files vs.protected acc files

As far as I know, protected AAC files either work or they don't. If your computer is authorized to use the song in question, there shouldn't be any limitation whether or not it repeats in iDVD. What version of iDVD are we talking about? Does it have the media browser? If so it may work better if you add the slideshow sans music (using the media browser) and then add the music from your iTunes library, also using the media browser.

I remember having exactly the same problem you describe but cannot for the life of me remember how I got around it....

Another suggestion... you may want to go over to the sections for iDVD and ask there as well, since the people who hang out there have a lot more experience with that program.

12" PB, PPCMacMini (x2), G3 iMac (x3), G4 iMac, G5 iMac, Centris 610, SE30, Mac+ Mac OS X (10.4.4) 3G iPod, iPod shuffle (x2), iPod nano

That's great news. I was also going to suggest creating the slideshow in iMovie, where editing audio is a little easier/more flexible than in iDVD. But then if you want to add more than one slideshow to your disc, you'd probably wind up with the same problem again.

Now that I reflect on it, it seems I didn't have the problem you describe until after I converted all my music to AAC. Strange.

My Apple friend suggest that I convert the file to a MP3

That works fine for regular AAC, although you will have a loss in quality, but you can't convert protected AAC to MP3, so if you had any of those, it wouldn't work.

I first posted a question there this weekend but no response

Hmmm, I don't know much about the people who hang out over there.... maybe they are just slower than we are! (grin)

The one I was using was a burned version from a friend

That may be part of the problem too. If it was protected ACC from their account, then it wouldn't be authorized on your computer. I wish I knew more about how the programs work together, but I've just not used it that much, and when I did, I think it was all normal MP3 files.

Hopefully the people in Palo Alto will be able to help you out too. Good luck with the project.

Martha,
If the song was playing on your machine it would indicate that the computer was authorized to play it by you or your friend. There 'may' be a bug in itunes that effects purchased track integration with other iApps.

Although I'm sure you already knew, the convert to menu in iTunes changes based on what your import settings are set to. If you want higher quality and need to do this conversion again you may want to try setting the import file format to AIFF instead of MP3.

Granted, that would give you a larger file size (by far), but it's essentially lossless in quality.

Good Luck @ the Store
-j

There 'may' be a bug in itunes that effects purchased track integration with other iApps.

That's the part I'm not sure of. And I know there can be issues if the iApps are not all up to the most recent versions.

I was thinking there may be some counter for number of times burned, much like the playlist, and it could be part of the issue here. I'd try to duplicate it, but I'm not clear on if the computer was manually authorized with different accounts and which account the offending file came from. Burn counts of playlists with that song as well. I know there was (? is) an internal consistency problem with trimming file start and stop times such that advancing the start time and burning the file would actually trim the song past the advanced playback point when burned. It would be a good idea to make sure the file was 'mint' in itunes (get info on it, select options and make sure it looks like a fresh download).

It's possible the fix was with the authorization system itself. If you ever had a machine unauthorized due to things like part replacement you end up with a halfway point of authorized/unauthorized. There's a fix for that, but maybe purchasing a song does the trick as well. 6.0.4 did come out recently. Is it possible that it was updated, but never launched before this export was attempted (click ok etc.)??

This may not be quite the right place to ask this, but this is where 'search' landed me.
I want to use 'protected ACC files' that I downloaded from iTunes in a Final Cut Express project I'm editing. Is it possible?
(I'll also take this to the FCE discussion list.)