Hey Sieghard, I just wanted to say thanks for writing up this tutorial
and sending it to the list. I've been working more with the music on my
phone lately, and creating some ring tones from my music was one of the
things I wanted to do. Your tutorial was just the ticket, and the
archive of this list is a great resource.
On 11/23/2014 7:11 PM, Sieghard Weitzel wrote:
Hello Listers,
As promised, here is as complete a guide as I could come up with
describing how you can make ringtones from your songs using iTunes 12.
This 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
Note: These instructions are based on doing this on a Windows 7 laptop
with Jaws 16. Most of this should work fine with other screenreaders
except of course for Jaws specific commands like “route Jaws cursor to
PC cursor” and “left mouse click with Jaws”. You would simply have to
know or find out which are equivalent commands in Window Eyes, NVDA or
whatever other screenreader you might use.
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 end time to no more than 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. Tab to the "Options" button (should be 8 tabs) 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. Unfortunately the
cursor seems to go back to the beginning of this entire screen, but
instead of using tab about 15 times, you can use F6 about six or seven
times to get to where you enter the start and stop time for the ringtone.
Changing Start and Stop time
4. The first item you get to will just say "Start read only", then if
you tab once there is a checkbox which is read as "0 checkbox not
checked" and if you tab again you will be on the actual field where
you can type in a start time and which by default is always read as "0
o'clock read only".
The only way to get into the edit field for start and stop time that
works for me is as follows:
1.Route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor by pressing Jaws Key+NumPad
Minus.
2.Do a left click with Jaws Key+NumPad Slash.
3.Jaws will say "button edit" and you can now delete the 0 and type in
the start time you want.
It is not necessary to first check the start time checkbox, if you
change the value it will get checked automatically.
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.
If you do change the start time, make sure you don't press enter after
typing in your time because this will take you all the way back to the
beginning and you have to tap about 16 times or press F6 a bunch of
times to get back to the stop time. Instead just press tab from the
edit field to go to "Stop".
5. Here again you first have the "Stop read only" label, than the "0
checkbox not checked" and lastly the field where you can edit the stop
time. By default the stop time is the total length of the song.
As with start time, , route Jaws cursor to PC cursor, then left click.
You are now in the edit field and the cursor is at the end of the
time, you can left arrow across it or simply delete it all and type in
your 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.
6. 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 and if you press Enter a second time it will take you back
to your song listing and if you press enter a third time the song will
play.
Only the part of the song you selected will play and you can 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
7. 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
8. 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.
9. 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, 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.
10. 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.
11. 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:
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.
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.
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