Germansuplex
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I posted this in another thread, but thought it would be better to have its own for discussion and to be more easily found.
You can still make your own ringtones from within iTunes using any song you want without any other software and, more importantly, free of charge.
Now that you have the ringtone menu on the left where you can view your ringtones, this makes it easy. Here are the step by step directions. It looks long, but it's very simple for people with basic knowledge of iTunes.
1. Make sure that in Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing, you have AAC set as the filetype. 128kbps is perfect, any higher quality probably won't make a difference on the iPhone's speaker.
2. Find any non-protected song in iTunes you want to use for the ringtone.
3. Use the Get Info -> Options -> Start/Stop times to edit the mp3/music file to the start/stop times of your choice. I use 30 second clips or less, though you could probably use longer clips. I have yet to try it.
4. Right-click on the track you edited and choose "Convert Selection To AAC".
5. Right-click on the original song file and clear the start/end times by unticking the checkboxes so they'll go back to playing as normal.
6. Right-click on the new clip you made (it should appear directly under the original song and have the length that you created, i.e. 30 seconds) and choose "Show in Windows Explorer". THis opens a browser window with the new clip you created. Minimize the window.
7. Now, right-click on the file IN iTunes and choose "Remove" then "Keep File". You want to delete it from the library, but keep it on your computer.
8. Bring up the browser window with the new file again, and rename the extension of the file from ".m4a" to ".m4r", i.e. "ringtone.m4a" to "ringtone.m4r". If you don't have extensions showing in windows, you will have to go to tools -> folder options -> view -> and untick the "Hide extensions for known file types box". This will show you the extensions of files so you can rename it.
9. Double-click on the file and it will be added to the ringtones menu in iTunes. Click on the ringtone graphic on the left side of iTunes and you should see the song in the list.
10. Right-click on the ringtone and choose "Show in Windows Explorer".
11. Rename the file's extension BACK to ".m4a", i.e. "ringtone.m4r" to "ringtone.m4a".
12. Double-click on the ringtone in iTunes. iTunes can't find the file because you've changed the name, and will prompt you to take action to correct the problem. Choose to find the song, and show iTunes where it is. It will still be in the ringtones folder and now you can sync it to your iPhone.
If you follow these instructions, they work. This may have been the workaround described by "rename the m4r to m4a" that was out a week ago, but the directions weren't clear. This should help.
Alternatively, you could first use a third-party app to add fade-in, fade-out and effects to your ringtones before importing them into iTunes and following the instructions above.
You can also create playlists with songs from the iTunes music store. Simply make a playlist, and drag songs from the store to the playlist. Export the playlist as a text file, and open it. It will show you links to the clips. Copy and paste the links into an explorer bar in a browser to download the clips, and use the steps above to convert them to ringtones.
To conserve space on your iPhone, especially if you plan on using lots of ringtones, you can striple lyrics, album art, and non-useful tag info from the ringtones to keep the file size down before syncing to the iPhone. Since the ringtones are standard AAC files, the tag info remains intact from the original file you used to make them.
I find it hard to pay .99 cents per ringtone for songs I legally own, especially when they're nothing more than clips of songs I own. I don't blame Apple, as it's obviously the record companies. Whether this workaround will be fixed in future iTunes updates remains to be seen.
You can still make your own ringtones from within iTunes using any song you want without any other software and, more importantly, free of charge.
Now that you have the ringtone menu on the left where you can view your ringtones, this makes it easy. Here are the step by step directions. It looks long, but it's very simple for people with basic knowledge of iTunes.
1. Make sure that in Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing, you have AAC set as the filetype. 128kbps is perfect, any higher quality probably won't make a difference on the iPhone's speaker.
2. Find any non-protected song in iTunes you want to use for the ringtone.
3. Use the Get Info -> Options -> Start/Stop times to edit the mp3/music file to the start/stop times of your choice. I use 30 second clips or less, though you could probably use longer clips. I have yet to try it.
4. Right-click on the track you edited and choose "Convert Selection To AAC".
5. Right-click on the original song file and clear the start/end times by unticking the checkboxes so they'll go back to playing as normal.
6. Right-click on the new clip you made (it should appear directly under the original song and have the length that you created, i.e. 30 seconds) and choose "Show in Windows Explorer". THis opens a browser window with the new clip you created. Minimize the window.
7. Now, right-click on the file IN iTunes and choose "Remove" then "Keep File". You want to delete it from the library, but keep it on your computer.
8. Bring up the browser window with the new file again, and rename the extension of the file from ".m4a" to ".m4r", i.e. "ringtone.m4a" to "ringtone.m4r". If you don't have extensions showing in windows, you will have to go to tools -> folder options -> view -> and untick the "Hide extensions for known file types box". This will show you the extensions of files so you can rename it.
9. Double-click on the file and it will be added to the ringtones menu in iTunes. Click on the ringtone graphic on the left side of iTunes and you should see the song in the list.
10. Right-click on the ringtone and choose "Show in Windows Explorer".
11. Rename the file's extension BACK to ".m4a", i.e. "ringtone.m4r" to "ringtone.m4a".
12. Double-click on the ringtone in iTunes. iTunes can't find the file because you've changed the name, and will prompt you to take action to correct the problem. Choose to find the song, and show iTunes where it is. It will still be in the ringtones folder and now you can sync it to your iPhone.
If you follow these instructions, they work. This may have been the workaround described by "rename the m4r to m4a" that was out a week ago, but the directions weren't clear. This should help.
Alternatively, you could first use a third-party app to add fade-in, fade-out and effects to your ringtones before importing them into iTunes and following the instructions above.
You can also create playlists with songs from the iTunes music store. Simply make a playlist, and drag songs from the store to the playlist. Export the playlist as a text file, and open it. It will show you links to the clips. Copy and paste the links into an explorer bar in a browser to download the clips, and use the steps above to convert them to ringtones.
To conserve space on your iPhone, especially if you plan on using lots of ringtones, you can striple lyrics, album art, and non-useful tag info from the ringtones to keep the file size down before syncing to the iPhone. Since the ringtones are standard AAC files, the tag info remains intact from the original file you used to make them.
I find it hard to pay .99 cents per ringtone for songs I legally own, especially when they're nothing more than clips of songs I own. I don't blame Apple, as it's obviously the record companies. Whether this workaround will be fixed in future iTunes updates remains to be seen.
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