 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
I've avoided it forever for fear of losing my beloved assortment of extensions, WMA, WMV etc. and the ability to play through Winamp & VLC.
But there's a bunch of decent videos, VAST included, that are only available for legal download through iTunes.
If I download the application just for video downloads, will it play silly buggers with my existing stuff?
it will ask you if you want to change the association during installation, it'll only change them if you agree to it. If you don't change them it'll probably ask you every time you use it though (though may have a tick box option to stop it asking).
Even if you do change the association, winamp/vlc will no doubt ask you you to change it back when used... it's an easy option to change either way.
Anyways it sounds more like you don't want itunes to "convert" your files to the .aac extention, which again it will ask you as when it scans for file, you only have to say no (zammo)...
Itunes is a PITA, awkward for no particularly good reason & the one example of Apple sticking it head up it own arse for no good reason unfortunately (I really don't understand why either). Thats still no reason to avoid it like the plague.. though it will install an auto updater and download more apple software for no good reason.
What will happen is whenever you start up iTunes, it will moan about not being the default player for all audio file types, and will ask you if you want to "fix this problem". Click no, grumbling that it's not a problem, and click the "Do not show me this message again".
Problem solved, until you upgrade iTunes to the next version and it starts asking you again. Pfffft. '[i]Problem[/i]'.
That's fine, I have that many different applications for retro-associations that want to own all of the files but reversing, for example, having everything open in Winamp is easy enough.
I really, really don't want everything in AAC but i'll just say no. And no. And no again.
And the Bazinga question is: If I download VAST, for example, and it comes in MOV, will Apple let me export it to my Android HTC or is that a no, no , no too?
itunes doesn't convert everything to aac, only when importing cd's if you select that option.
Most movies come with drm that prevents playing playing in non apple applications, it can be stripped out with the help of google.
Thats no different to most delivery systems and seams to be more about the film industry than itunes etc.
You can also create MP3 versions of songs bought through iTunes itself and play them in other applications - for example, I've converted a song from Purchased AAC format to MP3 and used it in Powerpoint. I think the music DRM was relaxed on the majority of stuff a fair few years ago.
Excellent. It's going on the Guest account disconnected from the network for this job only. If it works with VAST, including removing its DRM, then i'll be happy.
Tippety-tap.
What's the issue with AAC anyway? It's not a proprietary format, it works on other audio players*, and my understanding is that it's a better quality audio format than MP3, which, as it's actually MP4, makes sense.
This is my understanding, anyway.
*except for Microsoft ones.
Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.[2]
AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 specifications.[3][4] Part of the AAC known as High-Efficiency Advanced Audio Coding (HE-AAC) which is part of MPEG-4 Audio is also adopted into digital radio standards like DAB+ and Digital Radio Mondiale, as well as mobile television standards DVB-H and ATSC-M/H.
AAC supports inclusion of 48 full-bandwidth (up to 96Â kHz) audio channels in one stream plus 16 low frequency effects (LFE, limited to 120Â Hz) channels, up to 16 "coupling" or dialog channels, and up to 16 data streams. The quality for stereo is satisfactory to modest requirements at 96Â kbit/s in joint stereo mode; however, hi-fi transparency demands data rates of at least 128Â kbit/s (VBR). The MPEG-2 audio tests showed that AAC meets the requirements referred to as "transparent" for the ITU at 128Â kbit/s for stereo, and 320Â kbit/s for 5.1 audio.
AAC is also the default or standard audio format for YouTube, iPhone, iPod, iPad, Nintendo DSi, iTunes, DivX Plus Web Player and PlayStation 3. It is supported on PlayStation Portable, Wii (with the Photo Channel 1.1 update installed), Sony Walkman MP3 series and later, Sony Ericsson; Nokia, Android, BlackBerry, and webOS-based mobile phones, with the use of a converter. AAC has also seen some adoption on in-dash car audio especially on high-end units such as the Pioneer AVIC series.
If you're using iTunes and Android in the same sentence, I'd suggest looking at [url= http://www.doubletwist.com/ ]doubleTwist[/url].
I don't use it myself as I'd rather stick pins in my eyes than try and wrestle iTunes to my bidding, but it's supposed to be very good.