Ringtones

Ringtones

After abit of hunting around the internet I found a really good post that explained how to create ringtones with music that already exists within iTunes.  Since it would normally cost to buy a ringtone from Apple its a nice idea to be able to take music that you already have and create a ringtone from it.  I’ve not looked to see whether its possible to purchase ringtones from other people, but I assume this isn’t possible (not to be picky put isn’t this a monopoly! but that’s an arguement for another day).

So how do you go about creating a ringtone in itunes, well its a shame its not as simple as right click create ringtone its abit more difficult than that.

Here is the step by step guide of how to create the ringtones from a record track within your music library:

  1. Select the song that you want and right click and select “Get Info”.
  2. This will display the track information, go to the options tab of the track.  On this options tab there is the start time and end time of the track.  Select the checkboxes next to both of these and select the 30 second segment that you would like to be your ringtone.  A ringtone must be 30 seconds or less, but in reality 20 seconds is the max before the phone will go to voicemail.  Click “Ok” to return back to the library
  3. Right click on the song that you have just changed the length of the song.  This should show a menu with a convert selection to AAC  (If the dropdown menu item does not contain “Convert Selection to AAC” and reads “Convert Slection to MP3″ (or some other format) go to iTunes -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Importing and change the “Import Using” drop down menu to “AAC Encoder”).  Once the song has been encoded go back to the Get Info and uncheck the start time / end time.
  4. Find the location that this encoded will have been created, this will normally be in the same location as original music track.  It will be named as *.m3u.  Rename the file to being *.m3r (which is the itunes ringtone extension).
  5. Finally the last stage go back into itunes and import the file into iTunes.  This should now add it into the ringtone section of iTunes.

Probably not as easy as it should be, but I suppose Apple are out to make money!

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