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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95 Apps
Unfortunately, it looks like the Nokia music player on the N95 doesn't recognize the format of the new iTunes Plus downloads. To get around this, I right-clicked on the files in iTunes and selected "Convert to AAC". The newly converted files could then be transferred to the N95 and worked flawlessly (including Artwork).

[kirkmc adds: Interesting. This suggests that they are not standard AAC files. Can anyone else confirm whether these files work on other AAC-supporting devices? Note that the "Convert to AAC" command, in the Advanced menu, will change the bit rate of the songs, if your iTunes Importing preferences are not set to 256 kpbs. Perhaps the bit rate is causing the problem?]
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It might be the metadata
Authored by: borgendorf on May 31, '07 10:08:09AM
There's a discussion on Rogue Amoeba's Fission software page about this. It appears that Apple has added metadata about the owner in some non-standard AAC fields, and it may be these fields that cause some players reject the file.

http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/posts/News/Fission-loves-iTunesPlus-2007-05-30-17-30.html

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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: wmaycisco on May 31, '07 10:34:01AM

New songs play fine with open source programs. It's probably the bit rate.



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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: gizmo on May 31, '07 11:20:23AM
Engadget had an article where they tested the new tracks in a couple of different media players. They showed the music playing in VLC, RealPlayer, and Windows Media Player 11.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/05/30/itunes-plus-and-emis-drm-free-music-hands-on/

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bit rate limit on phones
Authored by: taran on May 31, '07 11:43:06AM

My Motorola SLVR has a bit rate limit to files it will play. I believe it is 196kbps, but I could be wrong and am too lazy to check right now.



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Better solution using QuickTime Pro
Authored by: Mr. H on May 31, '07 02:17:13PM
Converting using iTunes is not a great idea. iTunes de-codes the AAC to uncompressed and then re-compresses it, resulting in additional quality loss. Granted, the loss should not be that great given that the starting point is a high-quality 256 kbps AAC, especially if the destination format is AAC at an equal or higher bitrate.

However, to avoid the quality loss issue, you can use QuickTime Pro instead:

  • Open the AAC in QT pro, and choose "export" from the "File" menu.
  • In the dialogue that appears, choose "Movie to MPEG-4" in the "Export" drop-down menu.
  • Click the "options…" button.
  • Choose "MP4 (ISMA)" from the "file format" drop-down menu at the top of the window.
  • Click on the "Audio" tab.
  • Choose "Pass through" from the "Audio format" drop-down menu.
  • Click on the "streaming" tab.
  • Click on the "enable streaming" check box. The settings can be left as default. This avoids any potential issues with streaming the track via iTunes sharing. It has no affect on quality, it just affects the MP4 wrapper that the audio is stored in.
  • Click "OK"
  • Now we're back at the "Save exported file as…" dialogue. Change the extension of the file name to be saved from .mp4 to .m4a
  • Choose a destination folder for the file to be saved to. (don't choose the same folder as the original, unless you've changed the name of the file or backed-up the original).
  • Click save
QuickTime Pro will now "re-wrap" your audio in a brand new ISMA-compliant .mp4 wrapper. This should solve any compatibility issues you are having without re-encoding the audio.

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I forgot to say…
Authored by: Mr. H on May 31, '07 02:29:49PM
…that the new file will not carry-over any of the meta-data from the original file. Once the new file is created, it can be added to iTunes, and one of Doug's excellent iTunes scripts: "copy tag info tracks to tracks" http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/dl.php?sc=copytinforackstotracks can be used to copy all the meta-data from the original track to the new one.

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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: JoolsG4 on May 31, '07 02:40:49PM

iTunes Plus songs play perfectly on Sony Ericsson phones. Tested on a W610i (Walkman) and K800i (Cybershot)



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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: Fuellemann on Jun 01, '07 12:59:48AM
Hi,

our software FoneLink will automatically convert these DRM-free songs so you can play them on your Nokia mobile phone.

Thanks

Jan Fuellemann (nova media) http://www.novamedia.de

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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: scrytch on Jun 01, '07 05:07:35PM
I've posted about this on my blog here http://www.shasam.net/archives/58 a couple of days ago.

As posted there, I've tried various devices including a Sony Ericsson M600i with no luck.

Regards,
Shane.

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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: holmanders on Jun 02, '07 05:12:17AM

Works fine on a SonyEricsson W880 phone.
Just transferred the song and am playing it.
Artist, album and title metadat transferred, album art does not show in phone (yet?).



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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: jking_ok on Jun 09, '07 12:39:39AM
I've been investigating this for my Nokia E61 and have come up with a simple fix (which I propose to submit as a separate hint) but essentially there is a single byte which mucks up the Nokia/Symbian-based phones with iTunes Plus. (It's a change in the structure of the .m4a file, which is why re-wrapping the audio data works.) I've put a fixer tool and commentary on my blog. Hope this helps, Joshua

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iTunes Plus songs On Any Nokia Series 60
Authored by: jking_ok on Jun 14, '07 03:41:10PM
(Okay not unique enough for a separate hint.) This works on my Nokia E61 and I've had reports from at least N95 users. However I believe most N-Series/E-Series users are affected. Here's the condensed version of the fix:
  1. Go to my blog and download PutPinfInItsPlace (free, Java)
  2. If Safari doesn't unzip it, find it in the Finder, and double-click it.
  3. Double-click on PutPinfInItsPlace.jar
  4. For each album, run the tool selecting the .m4a files in the iTunes Music folder album folders. The tool will backup and fix each song in turn
  5. Send a fixed song to your phone (for example via Bluetooth - highlight the file in the Finder and choose Finder - Services - Send to Bluetooth Device...) and verify that it plays in Music Player.
Next for syncing once you are done, you will want to fix the metadata so both your phone and iTunes can read it. There's an experimental patch to AtomicParsley on my blog which enables this.

For syncing itself, Nokia recently released Nokia Media Transfer for Mac OS X, which I highly recommend using, however, only N-Series phones are natively supported. To use E-Series phones you'll need to follow the instructions on my site.

Note that the default behaviour of NMT uses QuickTime to transcode the iTunes Plus songs even after I've fixed them. You can tell NMT to bypass this by editing the profile (note that if you are an N-Series user you'll have to be careful and make sure your profile does not get overwritten by the server updates it does) and adding m4a to the array of conformanceGuaranteedFileExtensions (the profiles are simply plist files that can be edited in Property List Editor).

That's a quick summary to go over everything I've discovered since first reading that the songs didn't work in the interest of helping everyone (and myself - I've got iTunes Plus songs too). More details of the week that was are on my blog. (I more closely follow the comments there, they get e-mailed to me, so use that if you have questions.)

Joshua

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iTunes Plus songs On Nokia N95
Authored by: scrytch on Jun 09, '07 04:50:58PM
Hi everyone,

I've just tried Joshua's fix tool and it works! I recommend checking out his site and finding out the details on how it works, and grab the Java app from there or (unless Joshua tells me to take it down) mirrored on my site too.

Regards,
Shane.

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