Buying From Itunes (Part 2) - Importing into iTunes, Copy protection

Importing into iTunes

iTunes, the app, isn’t limited to handling media bought from iTunes, the content store. Just drag other media files onto its window to import them. If it can’t handle a file, it’ll say so; later in this article we’ll look at ways to convert media into more Apple-friendly formats. To rip a CD, just insert it in your Mac’s drive and iTunes will offer to import it. You can set the quality and format of CD imports globally: go to iTunes > Preferences > General > Import Settings.

If you open iTunes in OS X, select Preferences from the iTunes menu and click the Store tab, you can set it to prefer either 720p or 1080p content by default when downloading HD videos

Selected movies have been available for some time at the ‘Full HD’ reso­lution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (I080p), and TV shows are now following suit. Thanks to new compression algorithms, 1080p files aren’t hugely bigger than their 720p H D counterparts but do offer superior picture quality, as long as your hardware supports the greater resolution; this demands more processing power as well as sufficient pixels. The 2012 Apple TV supports 1080p, as does the new iPad and all current Macs.

If you open iTunes in OS X, select Preferences from the iTunes menu and click the Store tab, you can set it to prefer either 720p or 1080p content by default when downloading HD videos (bearing in mind that not all are available in 1080p). If you buy an HD video on a supported iOS device or Mac, only the HD format is downloaded; to get the SD version, you can go to your Purchased page in iTunes. If you buy an HD video on an unsupported device, the SD version will be downloaded, but you can get the HD version later on a supported device using the same trick. If you only pay for the SD version and later want HD, you’ll have to buy the item again at the higher price.

If you try to sync an H D video to a device that doesn’t support it, you’ll get an error message saying it can’t be played. HD videos from the iTunes Store are compatible with iPhone 4 or later, iPad, iPod touch (4th generation or later), Apple TV (second or third generation), and computers.

Copy protection

There’s still DRM (copy protection) on videos that you buy from Apple, and a maximum of five Macs or PCs can be authorized to play content using any one Apple ID. Authorize a machine by running iTunes on it and going to Store > Authorize This Computer. If you’ve hit the limit and can’t remember which computers you’ve authorized, start again by viewing your account information in iTunes (top right) and clicking Deauthorize All. There’s no limit on the number of iOS devices that can be authorised, but if you’re trying to sync media to an iOS device from iTunes and get authorization error messages, it could be because it’s been bought using a different account from the one you’ve set up in iOS on that device.

If you’ve hit the limit and can’t remember which computers you’ve authorized, start again by viewing your account information in iTunes (top right) and clicking Deauthorize All

iCloud complicates things. You set up your iCloud account on iOS separately from your iTunes login. When it comes to iCloud services like automatically downloading purchases made on other devices or access­ing music via iTunes Match, no more than ten computers or devices (in any combina­tion) can be associated with an Apple lD, and once a device is linked to an account it can’t be switched for 90 days. This is a bizarre and potentially frustrating limita­tion, so be careful not to set up the wrong device with the wrong Apple ID, and keep in mind that you won’t be able to swap a device at will between different accounts. Since Apple seems determined not to make it easy to share devices between people with different iTunes accounts or Apple IDs, the simplest approach is for everyone who regularly uses your devices to share the same iTunes account, if that’s feasible - otherwise things can really start to get very complicated.

iTunes Match

DRM also means you can’t convert or copy movies you’ve bought from Apple, except between iOS devices via iTunes. Although there are some great video con­version programs around, as we’ll see later, they won’t convert DRM-protected video files, partly because it’s technically difficult to do so (that’s the point of DRM) and partly because it’s illegal in many places to supply tools for breaking copy protection. The one common exception is Handbrake, which we’ll look at on p59, but while this can rip DVDs, it can’t convert downloaded iTunes movies.

Rent or buy?

Once you buy a movie in iTunes, it’s yours to watch on any device authorized to your Apple ID. Even if you delete it from all your computers and devices, you can download it again free of charge. It’s yours to keep.

iTunes purchased

Renting is, obviously, different. When you rent a movie, you get 30 days from the date of rental to start watching it, and then 24 hours (in the US) or 48 hours (in the UK and the rest of the world) to finish watching it after you’ve started. Note that pressing Play once will start the timer, even if you immediately hit Stop, so take care; if you just want a taste of a movie you’ve rented for later, watch the preview online instead.

Once these periods expire, the movie will disappear from your iTunes library. You can watch a movie as many times as you like within the 24 or 48 hour window. Some movies are available in ‘HD’ (720p) or 1080p HD. You can watch rented movies on your Mac or PC, iPhone, iPad, iPod touch (with iOS 3.1.3 or later), iPod clas­sic, iPod Nano (3rd, 4th or 5th generation), or on your TV using your Apple TV. HD movies will play in HD on your computer, iPhone 4 or 4S, iPad, iPod touch (4th gen­eration or later) or Apple TV; only the 3rd generation Apple TV and 3rd generation iPad support 1080p. If you download a rented movie in iTunes on your computer, you can transfer it to an iOS device, but the movie will then disappear from your computer's iTunes library. You can move the movie between devices as many times as you like during the rental period - so you can start watching it at home and continue on the move - but the movie can only exist on one device at a time. If you rent it directly on an iOS device, however, it can’t be trans­ferred from there to any other device.

Music matching

iTunes Match is iCloud’s solution to the nightmare of syncing, and it’s a clever idea. When you sign up for $39 a year and then turn on the feature in iTunes, the soft¬ware analyses your music library (it only works with music) and matches every track it can with the equivalent track on the iTunes Store. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t originally buy the track from there: since Apple has the world’s biggest digital music library, it’ll probably have what you have. But if it doesn’t, it’ll upload your file and keep it stored on its servers for you. Because almost all of your music will already be in the Store, there’s no waiting around for gigabytes of data to upload over your straining broadband connection; Apple already has the data. It’ll also maintain your playlists, along with album artwork and other metadata.

iTunes Match is iCloud’s solution to the nightmare of syncing, and it’s a clever idea.

Now the clever part: this library becomes available to all your iOS devices when iTunes Match is activated and you’re signed in with your Apple ID. Although tracks have to be downloaded to the device before they’ll play - it’s not, currently, a streaming service - you don’t have to keep all your tracks on the device, unless you want to; you can just access them via wifi whenever you want to. On a 16GB iPad, for instance, you can browse a 20,000 track music library wirelessly - far more than you could fit on the iPad itself. It’s also handy that playlists are automatically synced across your devices, although you can only set them up and manage them within iTunes on your Mac (or PC). When you buy more tracks, they’re automatically made available too. You can even play tracks over 3G on your iPhone or 3G/4G iPad when Wi-Fi isn’t available, although this will eat bandwidth quickly. If you’re going to be offline, you can download tracks and albums manually to your device in high quality AAC format and play them without needing a connection. You can also play tracks from iTunes Match through your iOS device to any Airplay speaker system.