Hello Listers,
Jenny and Fazil wanted instructions on how to convert MP3 ringtones to M4R. Since I had the following tutorial saved, I am reposting it instead. It is the complete guide to making ringtones from songs using iTunes and the conversion is part of it towards the end. If you have HTML enabled then this document has headings and you can use "H" or "1" and "2" to find them. The heading you want is called "Creating the AAC version of your selection", you can always use text search if the headings don't show up. here is as complete a guide as I could come up with describing how you can make ringtones from your songs using iTunes 12. I am doing this on a laptop with Windows 10 Professional and with Jaws 17, my iTunes version is up-to-date as of today and it is Version 12.3.2.35. A few things are actually easier now than they were when iTunes 12 was first released because it was difficult to get into the edit fields for setting start time and end time, but now once you check the "Start time" and "End time" checkboxes and tab once focus pops right into the edit fields and you can change them, arrow around in them and so on. This email has headings, both level 1 and 2 which you can use if you want to get back to a particular section. After explaining the process and after the "Clean up" heading is another heading called "More details about adding to library and syncing" and it goes into more details about how to correctly rename the file extension and how to sync your tones to your phone. I did it this way because for more advanced users some of my descriptions may already contain more details than necessary, but for people who are new to technology or less experienced with Windows commands it is hopefully useful. I also realize that you can add ringtones to your library by copying them into the "Automatically Add to Library" folder. If you prefer to do this than that's fine, I personally prefer to put stuff into the folder where it belongs and add it to the library either by simply playing it or by using the "Add /File to Library" or "Add Folder to Library" option in the iTunes File menu. I wanted to provide a tutorial on how to make ringtones from songs since several people asked for it and I did the same for iTunes 11. I don't want to start a debate on how to do it better by using a different program to create the ringtone, if anybody feels they know of a better way than all I can say is go ahead and create your own tutorial and this way people can choose which method they want to use. Creating ringtones from songs using iTunes 12 Basic steps 1. Find the song you want 2. Press Control+I for "Get Info", tab to the options button, tab to start and end time and set them making sure the total does not exceed 40 seconds. 3. Right click on your song and select "Create AAC Version" 4. Press Control+C on the newly created 40 second version of the song to copy it to the clipboard, open your iTunes Media\Tones folder and use Control+V to paste the song into the folder. 5. Go to the Tools menu of your Windows Explorer window, go to Folder Options and the View tab, make sure "Hide extensions for known file types" is Off. 6. Rename the .M4A extension to M4R. 7. Press enter on the newly renamed file to play it in iTunes, this automatically adds it to your Tones library. 8. Connect your phone, make sure Sync All Tones is selected or if you sync selected tones, make sure your new ringtone is checked, then sync your phone. detailed instructions 1. Find the song you want to make into a ringtone in your Music library in iTunes. 2. Right click, use the application menu key or Shift+F10 and select "Get Info". You can also use The shortcut key which is Control+I. 3. Shift+Tab 3 times (going backwards) to the "Options" button and activate it by pressing the spacebar or enter. Note that nothing obvious happens, but visually the "Options" content now is on the screen and you have to tab to it. I believe it should be 7 tabs to get to the "Start time" edit field. You don't have to check the start and end time checkboxes which are one tab before the edit fields, as soon as you change the start time from 0:00 to something else that checkbox will be checked automatically. In the end time field you see the total length of the song, for example "3:47.293", once again as soon as you change that the checkbox will be checked. 4. Usually you start at the beginning of the song, i.e. 0:00, but if the song starts very slow you may want to find a good spot a few seconds from the beginning where you start the ringtone. Now tab 3 more times to get to the stop time. Make sure that the stop time doesn't exceed the start time by more than 40 seconds which is the maximum length of a ringtone. 5. After you enter your stop time you want to press the OK button so you can play the song and listen to how your segment sounds. Instead of tabbing about 12 times to get to the OK button, you can now just press Enter which closes the dialogue and you can now play the portion of the song you marked to see if it sounds good the way it is. If it stops in the middle of a note or word you can make it a few seconds shorter to find a better place. I usually set the stop time to 39 or 40 seconds and then make it shorter to make it sound good. A Note on the start and stop time format The start time is displayed as 0:00 where the first 0 means 0 minutes, then a ":" and then the 00 after that is for the seconds. The stop time by default has the ending time of the song, for example 3:23.46 where the first 3 is the number of minutes, then the ":", then the next 2 digits are the seconds and then a "." and the last number or numbers is I guess maybe in one tenth of a second or even one hundreds, not quite sure, but it's a very small increment. Creating the AAC version of your selection 6. Bring up the context menu with a right click, press the application menu key or Shift+F10 and select "Creat AAC Version". Almost immediately you will hear that tri-tone iTunes makes when it's finished doing something. This will create an AAC version of the song for only the section of the song you specified. This new short song will appear right underneath the original song in your list of songs, so you just have to down arrow once to find it. You can press enter to play it one last time and to make sure it is as you want it. Note: If you don't see a "Create AAC Version option when you right click on the song, go to "Edit" and "Preferences" or use the shortcut which is Control+Comma. On the General tab click on Import settings, the shortcut is Alt+O. Verify that the AAC encoder settings are selected, if MP3 is selected as the encoder you have to change it to AAC. Also make sure you select iTunes Plus" for the quality setting so you get a good quality ringtone. Copying, renaming, adding to library and syncing 7. Select the newly created short AAC version of the song in iTunes and press CTRL+C for "copy". Open your iTunes folder (most likely in "My Music", go to the "iTunes Media" folder and the "Tones" or "Ringtones" folder. Press Control+V to paste the song into the Ringtones folder. 8. Right click on the file and select rename or press the shortcut which is F2. Change the extention for the file which will be .M4A to .M4R. Confirm that you want to rename the file. Note: If you press F2 and don't see the extention, do the following: In Windows 7: go to "Tools" and "Folder Option". On the "View Tab" turn off "Hide Extentions for known file types". You can turn it back on after you are done creating your ringtones. In Windows 10: You can show/hide file extensions right from the "View" ribbon menu. The shortcut is Alt+V followed by H then F (a very nice shortcut to know). 9. After you have renamed the song with the .M4R extention, press Enter on the song which will start playing your new ringtones in iTunes. This step is important because by playing it, the tone will automatically be added to your Tones library. 10. Sync your iPhone with iTunes and your new ringtone will be available. Note: If you have "Sync selected ringtones" turned on, you first have to go to your phone under Devices, tab to the Tones tab, check it and then check the ringtone you created in the list of ringtones before it will sync to your phone. Clean-Up 1. When you are done you can delete the short version of the song you created from your iTunes library. Go back to the Music Library, find the short version of the song you created and press delete, when prompted select "Move to recycle bin". This is OK because you already moved the ringtone to the Ringtones folder and no longer need this copy of it. 2. Remember to uncheck the start and stop time checkboxes for the original song otherwise only the selected part of the song will play. Use Control+I for Get Info, tab to the Options button and activate it. Now use F6 until you get to Start, tab once and uncheck the checkbox. Tab to the Stop checkbox and uncheck it as well. Tab to OK and press the spacebar. More details about adding to library and syncing Assumption and the Tones folder When you installed iTunes the default location where iTunes data is kept is your Music folder. If you use Windows 7 and your user name is "MyName", this would be at c:\users\MyName\music. Here you would have an iTunes folder and in that iTunes folder is a subfolder called "iTunes Media". Inside iTunes Media are subfolders for the various media types. These folders (you may not have all of them) would be things like Audio Books, Automatically Add to iTunes, Books, Downloads, Home Videos, Mobile Applications, Movies, Music, Podcasts, Tones and TV Shows. If you have never purchased a movie or TV show, chances are you may not have these folders. If you don't have a Tones folder, you can create one just using standard Windows commands, then put your ringtones into that folder. Don't worry about any of the default ringtones Apple provides, they are part of iOS and won't appear anywhere. Ringtone format For ringtones to work on an iPhone, they must be in Apple's AAC format and have an extension of m4r. You can rename any AAC file (MPEG-4 Audio File) of 40 seconds or less to have the m4R extension. If you have to change the extension, do the following: In Windows 7: 1. In your Tones folder, press "Alt+T" for the Tools menu. 2. Up arrow once to select "Folder Options" which is at the very bottom of that menu hence you can up arrow to wrap around to the end and get to it right away. You could also just press Alt+T followed by "o". 3. Press Control+Tab to go to the "View tab" of the multi-tab dialogue which opens. 4. Your screenreader should say something like "Treeview, Files and Folders, 18 items". 5. Arrow down until you get to an items which says "Hide extensions for known file types, on" and press the spacebar to change it to "off". 6. Tab to "OK" and activate it with spacebar or enter. In Windows 10: 1. Make sure you are on the file you want to rename. 2. Use the ribbon menu shortcut Alt+V followed by H then F 3. The extension now shows and you can use F2 to edit it. 4. You can hide extensions again using the same shortcut, Alt+V followed by H then F If you now check any tones you have in your folder you will hear the name followed by .m4r and if you have any that are still m4a, use the F2 (Rename) command and just change the "a" to an "r". You will see the following warning when you change a file extension, in this case go ahead and select "Yes": Rename If you change a file name extension, the file might become unusable. Are you sure you want to change it? Yes No Also remember that you can't just rename an MP3 file/ringtone by changing the .mp3 extension to .m4r, this will not work since it's a completely different format and you would have to first convert the MP3 ringtone to the AAC format and then rename it. I also suggest you go back into Tools, Folder Options and set Hide extensions for known file types back to On in order to avoid accidently changing the extension of a file. Adding Tones to your Tones library in iTunes Now that your tones are in the Tones folder, you still have to add them to your iTunes library. You can do this in a couple of different ways. My 2 favorite methods are this: 1. If you only have a few tones, you can just press enter on each one. This will open iTunes if it's not already open and start the tone playing. You can stop it by pressing the spacebar, Alt+Tab back to your Tones folder and repeat until you have played all the tones you want to add. Each time as the tone plays it is added to the Tones library (shortcut key in iTunes to get to that is Control+8). 2. If you have a lot of tones, just close your Tones folder and open iTunes. Go to the Tones library with Control+8. Now press Alt+F to get to the File menu and select the "Add Folder to Library". A standard Windows Open dialogue appears, browse to your Tones folder, then tab to "Select" and activate it by pressing enter or spacebar. This will add all tones in your Tones folder to the tones library. You can use F6 or tab to find the list view of Tones and arrow down through the list to see if they are all there, pressing enter on any of them will start playing it. Your Tones are now ready to be synced to your phone. Syncing Tones to your iPhone 1. Connect your iPhone to the computer and open iTunes. Find your device (easiest is to use Control+F to go to the search box, then tab a few times, it should be right after the "More" radio button). 2. Tab or use F6 until you get to the treeview which starts with "Summary". F6 probably gets you there if you press it 3 or so times. 3. Arrow down to "Tones", typing "T O" should get you there right away. 4. Tab past all the read only stuff until you get to "Sync Tones" and make sure the checkbox is checked. 5. Tab a couple more times, you will have 2 controls/options: "Sync all tones" and one tab more "Sync selected tones". Check the one you want. If you check to sync all tones then you can just tab to the "Apply" button or go to the file menu, arrow to Devices (use v for the shortcut) and then select to sync. If you check to sync selected tones you have to tab into the list view of all your tones, arrow down through them and check the ones you want, then go to Apply or sync. -- The following information is important for all members of the V iPhone list. If you have any questions or concerns about the running of this list, or if you feel that a member's post is inappropriate, please contact the owners or moderators directly rather than posting on the list itself. Your V iPhone list moderator is Mark Taylor and your owner is Cara Quinn - you can reach Cara at caraqu...@caraquinn.com The archives for this list can be searched at: http://www.mail-archive.com/viphone@googlegroups.com/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "VIPhone" group. 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