So you can't wait until the end of the month for the studio version of The Saints Are Coming...
If you're anything like me, that is an avid fanatic of both U2 and digital media, then you may already have all you need to put a "near CD quality" copy of The Saints Are Coming on your iPod right now. Namely, a U2.com subscription and a QuickTime Pro license.
U2.com is now "streaming" the full version of Saints for subscribers in 128 kbps AAC, which is the same format and bitrate used by Apple for the iTunes Store. U2.com was nice enough to post the file in a downloadable format with no encryption, but in a pesky QuickTime wrapper which doesn't play nice with iTunes or iPod.
Fortunately, the audio can be rewrapped so that iTunes sees it as a standard AAC (.m4a) audio file. This short tutorial will show you how to do just that.
Step 1:Download q_H_saintssong.mov from here:
Click.You must be logged into your U2.com subscription to have access to the file.
Incidentally, if you happen to have a digital media player that is Windows Media Audio compatible, you're in luck (for once). Just download w_H_saintssong.wma (128 kbps WMA) from here:
Click.No conversion necessary for the WMA. Again, you must be logged in to access the file.
Step 2:Open q_H_saintssong.mov in QuickTime Pro. AAC audio is basically an MPEG-4 media file with no video, so you're going to export to this format.
Select File>Export and select "Movie to MPEG-4" in the drop-down menu.
You want to perform this operation losslessly (AAC is a lossy codec, but this procedure does not result in any additional loss of audio data), so you want to make sure and select the "pass through" option for audio.
In the export dialog window, click on the "Options" button, click "Audio," and select "Pass through" on the drop-down menu.
Click "OK." Click "Save."
This should generate a file named q_H_saintssong.mp4 (unless you changed something).
Change the extension from .mp4 to .m4a and you've basically got yourself an AAC file.
Step 3:"There's no step 3; there's no step 3..."
OK, actually (ironically?) if you're on a Mac there is a step 3. If you're on a PC you can skip this step...
Mac files contain metadata including "type" and "creator" codes. iTunes is still going to see this file as an MPEG-4 video file even though it contains no video data and has the .m4a extension. You need to change the type to "M4A" (AAC audio) and the creator to "hook" (iTunes). OS X doesn't offer an easy way to do this, but fortunately there is a freeware program called
FileInfo that does.
Just open q_H_saintssong.m4a in FileInfo, change the type to "M4A" and the creator to "hook," and click "Change." you should see the file's icon change from QuickTime Movie to iTunes MPEG-4.
Step 4:Drag the file into iTunes, tag it however you like, sync your iPod, and rock on.
Step 5:With all the money you've just saved, make a
donation to Music Rising, or buy a
Music Rising t-shirt, or even a
Music Rising guitar.
And don't forget to buy the CD single when it hits shelves in November; it's for a good cause.
