Aug 14, '06 07:30:00AM • Contributed by: vaadkins
To remove the FairPlay protection from a purchased song, open up iMovie and start a new project. Now click on the Audio button, and drag any protected song from the song list onto the audio portion of the timeline. iMovie will then proceed to convert the song for use in the project. After iMovie has finished converting the song, click on the Photos button and drag a photo onto the movie portion of the timeline. (As of version 5.0, iMovie requires some sort of visuals to be present before exporting the project. Earlier versions did not have this requirement.)
After the photo finishes rendering, go to the File menu and click on Share. Click on the QuickTime tab and under the 'Compress Movie for' drop-down, select Expert Settings and then click the Share button.
A 'Save exported file as' dialog box will pop up. Under the Export drop-down menu, select the Sound to AIFF option, name the file as desired, and save the file to your desired location. After a couple of minutes of converting, you will have a DRM-free AIFF file. Take that file and import it into iTunes converting it to AAC, MP3, of whatever format your heart desires.
As far as sound quality goes, I am sure there is some loss of quality somewhere along the way, having done three conversions. However, I can't hear it, and I am sure it is a lot less than going from digital to analog back to digital again (as is the case with burning to CD and reimporting). Also, I am not sure if this works if you do not have QuickTime Pro, as I do have it.
[robg adds: This trick is hardly a secret at this point -- Chris Breen mentioned it in February 2005 on Playlist, and a Google search for iMovie Tunes DRM returns 158,000 matches on the subject. Somehow, it's not been documented here yet, though, so now it is.]
