iPod Is there a way to convert AAC to MP3?

[Kar91102]

I bought some songs off of iTunes Music Store and want to know if I can convert them from AAC to MP3. Also, what format are the video's in?

 

[macbaseball]

I bought some songs off of iTunes Music Store and want to know if I can convert them from AAC to MP3. Also, what format are the video's in?

The videos are in MPEG-4 encoded with H.264. As for converting the songs to MP3, I seem to remember that they turn out unlistenable, as they added that feature to prevent piracy. Why would you want to convert them anyways.

 

[homerjward]

you can burn them to a cd and reimport as an mp3/aiff/whatever. ive done that before and it works fine. not sure about the videos.

 

[Kar91102]

I like my songs in MP3 because that's what the majority of the my songs are formatted in.

 

[mad jew]

The burning and reimporting technique will work but I don't recommend it because you'll lose some quality. The two formats use different methods to compress sound files. Since the song has already been converted once using the AAC method and you can't put the "quality" back into the song, re-compressing it with the MP3 encoder will give you a lower final quality song. 🙁

 

[MacNoobie]

I assume everyones forgotten about JHymn for ripping iTunes encoded AAC songs to regular old MP3 files (without DRM of course).

 

[mrichmon]

I assume everyones forgotten about JHymn for ripping iTunes encoded AAC songs to regular old MP3 files (without DRM of course).

A protected AAC file from iTMS is stored in a file with the extension .m4p. An .m4p file stores the audio using the same compression scheme as audio stored in an .m4a file. The only difference is that the .m4p file is protected by Apple's DRM, and the .m4a file is not protected. If you rip your own CDs using iTunes on the default settings you will produce .m4a files.

JHymn mostly removed the DRM from the .m4p files to produce .m4a files. I say mostly because the owner information such as the name of the purchasing account remained in the file. If I recall correctly, Apples DRM encrypts the initial symbol table that decompression of the audio relies upon. JHymn unencrypted this table to remove the DRM.

The compression scheme used in both .m4p and .m4a files is defined by the MPEG-4 standard. MP3 files use the MPEG-3 standard for compression and there is no way to directly convert from MPEG-4 to MPEG-3 without loosing quality as an earlier poster pointed out. (There is also no way to directly convert from MPEG-3 to MPEG-4 without loosing quality.)

Also, since the OP asked questions about videos from iTMS I assume that they have upgraded to iTunes 6. As with other updates to iTunes, Apple has changed the DRM system slightly. As a result JHymn does not currently work with iTunes 6 purchased music. There will be a delay before JHymn is updated to work around the iTunes 6 DRM.