Latest music codecs

[Winston A. cely]

FCP doesn’t like anything except WAV or AIFF. You can get mp3s to import, but they are generally too low quality and have to be rendered if you want to hear them.

And if you’re doing this as a personal project and don’t plan on making money off of it, you can use the purchased songs, but as soon as you try to make money off of this project with purchased music, you will be in BIG BIG TROUBLE!

My advise to you is to make some music based on what you downloaded using GarageBand. It’s a lot easier than you would think (even for a non-musician such as myself). Of course if you have the money to buy the rights to those songs, or to pay someone to create new music for you, then by all means do that.

Winston A. Cely
Editor/Owner | Della St. Media, LLC

Mac Pro 3GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon
4 GB RAM | Final Cut Studio 5.1.4 | Aja Kona LHe

“If you can talk brilliantly enough about a subject, you can create the consoling allusion it has been mastered.” – Stanley Kubrick

[John Pale]

Use iTunes, Quicktime Pro or Compressor. Not FCP. AAC (or any compressed audio, really) will not work in FCP, you need to convert it first. (I have done it recently with tracks I had permission to use)

Tom is right however…. although you no longer have to worry about iTunes DRM copy protection, it is still legally improper to use copyrighted material in your edit without permission. Its fairly unlikely that you would be prosecuted for using them in a family video (especially now that they are not even bothering to copy protect them)…but stranger things have happened, and the record companies have on occasion “made an example” of some people. If you do it, you are taking that risk…both legally and karmically (sp.?)

(Note, I am not telling anyone how to crack DRM or get around Digital Rights Management. All iTunes music currently sold is NOT copy protected and has no DRM of any kind. You are on the honor system, just like with CD’s.)