I am not sure if this belongs here or General/OT but I am very glad there is free software out there on the Internet that actually works and does not cause problems.
To make a long story a little longer, I went through my Ipod and selected songs that I wanted to put on a flash drive, to use on the radio in my truck. I have a radio now that works with my Ipod but I have over 5,000 songs on my Ipod and the radio is pretty slow about scrolling through the play lists. I have a new radio now with a USB port on the front of it, and I bought some small 2 GB flash drives and picked out about 1,720 favorite songs from my Itunes library to put on the flash drives for use in the truck.
Trouble is, Itunes songs are in an m4a format, and are incompatible with a USB flash drive. I found a convertor program at http://free-m4a-to-mp3-converter.com/ that you select the Itunes files from the library in your Music folder and it converts them to MP3 format and puts them in a folder you assign to it. It even allows for different bit rates and has a music player. It worked perfectly for all of the songs in my Itunes library that did not have any DRM protection.
I read online about how you can strip DRM from Itunes songs by burning them on a disc and re-importing them as MP3 files, but I had over 150 DRM protected songs, all in different album folders scattered throughout my Itunes library that I wanted to put on these flash drives. I could have done it the hard way with burning to a re-writeable CD and re-importing the files, but it would have taken a very long time to both locate and burn/import and then add to the My Music library file. I searched yesterday and found an awesome program called Audials that removes DRM from audio files. Not only does it do that but it also simultaneously converts the files to MP3, WMA, or whatever format you need, plus all you have to do is click the "Locate" button on the convertor program and it locates all DRM encoded files in your computer and processed it all with one click of the mouse button. It did take about 2 hours to process all of the DRM files but it would have probably taken me 2 days to do it. Audials worked perfectly, from start to finish.
I also had problems with my Itunes in this process, because of mistakes I made when working with my Itunes library. I deleted my entire Itunes library by mistake. I have another free program called Sharepod that will exctract all of your music files from the Ipod back to your computer. It won't re-build play lists but at least you don't lose all your files. I had to remove and reinstall a new copy of Itunes and then import the library file that Sharepod stored in the My Music folder back into Itunes to fix the problems. I don't mind rebuilding my play lists, and I sure am grateful I did not lose my Itunes files. Sharepod works great and is 100% free; so were the other two programs. I test-played some of the MP3's from the flash drives on my computer and they sound great, so they should do the same in my truck too.
Itunes can be a pain to work with, especially for people like myself who may not have the computer skills to work with Itunes, and even if you do have the skills, it seems to me that Apple only lets you do what Apple says you can do with Itunes files. After I get my play lists all set up and re-sync my Ipod again, I may part company with Itunes. I really don't use it very much anyway and it takes up acres of space on my hard drive. My computer was much faster the other night when I had removed Itunes.
Whoever it is out there that writes good free programs that people can actually use, or if there are any BITOG'ers here who write free software, I just want to say Thanks a million for what you do. I always look online first for info when trying to solve a problem or fix something and these last few days and nights would have been a nightmare and a half without the help I received from the Internet.
To make a long story a little longer, I went through my Ipod and selected songs that I wanted to put on a flash drive, to use on the radio in my truck. I have a radio now that works with my Ipod but I have over 5,000 songs on my Ipod and the radio is pretty slow about scrolling through the play lists. I have a new radio now with a USB port on the front of it, and I bought some small 2 GB flash drives and picked out about 1,720 favorite songs from my Itunes library to put on the flash drives for use in the truck.
Trouble is, Itunes songs are in an m4a format, and are incompatible with a USB flash drive. I found a convertor program at http://free-m4a-to-mp3-converter.com/ that you select the Itunes files from the library in your Music folder and it converts them to MP3 format and puts them in a folder you assign to it. It even allows for different bit rates and has a music player. It worked perfectly for all of the songs in my Itunes library that did not have any DRM protection.
I read online about how you can strip DRM from Itunes songs by burning them on a disc and re-importing them as MP3 files, but I had over 150 DRM protected songs, all in different album folders scattered throughout my Itunes library that I wanted to put on these flash drives. I could have done it the hard way with burning to a re-writeable CD and re-importing the files, but it would have taken a very long time to both locate and burn/import and then add to the My Music library file. I searched yesterday and found an awesome program called Audials that removes DRM from audio files. Not only does it do that but it also simultaneously converts the files to MP3, WMA, or whatever format you need, plus all you have to do is click the "Locate" button on the convertor program and it locates all DRM encoded files in your computer and processed it all with one click of the mouse button. It did take about 2 hours to process all of the DRM files but it would have probably taken me 2 days to do it. Audials worked perfectly, from start to finish.
I also had problems with my Itunes in this process, because of mistakes I made when working with my Itunes library. I deleted my entire Itunes library by mistake. I have another free program called Sharepod that will exctract all of your music files from the Ipod back to your computer. It won't re-build play lists but at least you don't lose all your files. I had to remove and reinstall a new copy of Itunes and then import the library file that Sharepod stored in the My Music folder back into Itunes to fix the problems. I don't mind rebuilding my play lists, and I sure am grateful I did not lose my Itunes files. Sharepod works great and is 100% free; so were the other two programs. I test-played some of the MP3's from the flash drives on my computer and they sound great, so they should do the same in my truck too.
Itunes can be a pain to work with, especially for people like myself who may not have the computer skills to work with Itunes, and even if you do have the skills, it seems to me that Apple only lets you do what Apple says you can do with Itunes files. After I get my play lists all set up and re-sync my Ipod again, I may part company with Itunes. I really don't use it very much anyway and it takes up acres of space on my hard drive. My computer was much faster the other night when I had removed Itunes.
Whoever it is out there that writes good free programs that people can actually use, or if there are any BITOG'ers here who write free software, I just want to say Thanks a million for what you do. I always look online first for info when trying to solve a problem or fix something and these last few days and nights would have been a nightmare and a half without the help I received from the Internet.
