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Can you transfer music files from itunes to Windows Media Player?

  • 15-02-2009 7:22pm
    #1
    Dudess
    Closed Accounts Posts: 37,214 ✭✭✭✭


    As the thread title says.

    I'm sure it's been asked dozens of times but luddite eejit here chose a Creative Zen as a pressie which is wonderful and all, but while I've been uploading my albums to Windows Media Player, I don't know what the heck to do with my itunes tunes...


Comments

  • #2
    Voodu Child
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,706 ✭✭✭Voodu Child


    It can be a bit of a hassle, depending on the format you used to rip your CDs in Itunes, and how much you bought from the iTunes store, and when (they used to use DRM on the iTunes store and stopped at some stage).

    If a lot of your files are DRM protected, you're going to have problems. WMP won't play them, and they won't play on your creative either. There are ways around this (stripping the DRM) but they're outside the scope of this thread probably.

    If it won't play (non-DRM) AAC files, no biggie, you can fix that easily with a plugin (google 'AAC plugin for WMP').

    The track info will probably be messed up (WMP can't read iTunes generated track info) so you can let WMP try and come up with its own track info - it usually makes a lot of mistakes and you have to edit manually.

    That's about it, its a bit of hassle but do-able. Back up your music folder(s) (should be backed up anyway as a matter of course) and then just tell windows media player to 'add to library' by telling it where your iTunes songs are (or just copy the itunes album folders into wherever you keep your WMP music). See what happens, and from there you can see what needs to be fixed.

    There are also programs that can help moving from iTunes to WMP and vice versa, but ive not used any so can't recommend any particular ones.


  • #3
    art
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,178 ✭✭✭art


    You can use the smart playlist function in iTunes to gather together tracks according to file type and convert where possible. So, if you have a mixture of Mp3, DRM free AAC and DRM-ed AAC, the MP3s will play fine anyhow and will be picked up by WMP library, the purchased, non-DRM AAC files can be selected by the Smart playlist where you build the Smart list according to "File Type = "Purchased AAC file" (or something like that, use one track as an example).

    Then select all the tracks, right click and convert to MP3. I can't remember for sure if you are prompted or whether it is the default action that a MP3 copy is made, as opposed to overwriting the AAC version, so if you do this for a lot of tracks you may get lots of extra files and hence a big jump in library size. but WMP will then read in the converted files. Also, if you've loads of files, the conversion will take a long time.

    For the DRM stuff, as mentioned above, it is possible to remove the DRM, in a fairly straightforward and kind of obvious manner, but it's only practical for small quantities really and it is claimed (though that could be DRM rhubarb) that there is a loss of quality involved - though for tracks being played on a portable player I think that is marginal to no-existent really. But if there are loads of "Protected AAC files" in your library I think you are basically stuck without them.


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