The iMovie DRM Hack

So I’m reading all these blogs and forum posts and news items etc. about using iMovie to remove the DRM from a song downloaded from iTunes. A lot of people seem to think this is a Big Fat Deal.

Well as soon as I saw the first story about this I said, Hmm, interesting! And I tried it out. Here’s the deal.

1. Import the song from iTunes into an iMovie. You can do this by drag’n’drop from iTunes to iMovie. Takes a couple of minutes for an average song.

2. Export from iMovie to QuickTime. Use the “Sound to AIFF” option. Takes another couple of minutes.

3. Export from QuickTime to a file. Use the “CD-ROM” quality option.

4. Import back into iTunes, using drag’n’drop from the Finder to iTunes.

Alternatively, you can just burn to a CD, then rip back into iTunes. Here’s how:

1. Select the song in iTunes, and click the Burn icon. Follow the bouncing ball to burn the song to a CD.

2. Select the CD in iTunes, and Import. Done. Takes a lot less time.

If it’s more than one song, the CD route is the only way to go, folks.

This whole thing is such a huge yawn.