This site is NO LONGER being maintained for the "ALL NEW" site that talks about the new iMovie 11 please visit TheUnofficialiMovieFAQ.com
Background:
In order to be able to curb pirating "stealing" of music, Apple has encoded DRM (Digital Rights Management) within the song/AAC/MPEG-4 you downloaded. You also need to be on the latest version of Quicktime.
If you Get Info (command-I) on the .M4P file you will see it is "protected" MPEG-4 (protected AAC audio file in iTunes)
Problem:
When iMovie 3 was available the iTMS (iTunes Music Store) was not what is is today.
With iMovie 4 there have been many versions of iTunes and iMovie and you must make sure you are updated.
Solutions:
If you have ANY Slick iMovie plug-ins please go to to Geethree and upgrade you plugins to the latest version.
You can exercise your Fair Use of this song in a few ways:
- If on iMovie 4 you MUST be able to bring all your iApps and Quicktime up to date. If it is still not working and it is "up to date", it sometimes helps to play the song in iTunes before trying to use it in iMovie.
- You can Burn all the songs you would like to use to a CD them import them back into iMovie (or iTunes)
- You can bypass iTunes and use a product like Wiretap or Audio Hijack to record the song to an AIFF file on your hard drive then import it .
- There is a program called Hymn that will let you unprotect and convert the files
Note: Fair warning! It is technically illegal for you to use a copyrighted work and publish to the web or DVD. Just because "everybody does it" doesn't make it legal. Now what are the odds that the artist, or their lawyer, will see your DVD or web movie? You will have to decide that for yourself.
