Thread: iTunes.... Sucks.

So today I got a call from my youth pastor that he needs Jakes Browns crash video from the X-Games for the middle school service that we had tonight.

So I say ok I'll look around the net see if I cant get a good high quality free download. So google was littered with youtube videos so I think heck I bet I can just take it from iTunes and use a free mv4 to avi converter.

So I spend 2 bucks (Reimbursed by the church) buy the best of skate video from X-games 13 that has multiple shots of the crash on it. So I buy it download it at a glorious 3mb/s. 10 minutes later I try and try and try to crack the mv4 with a plethora of free and free if you know were to look programs and they all fail to re encode it.

So I play through it in iTunes again trying to think how I could possibly do this without a converter with the systems I own and the church owns. Then I realize the little fraps fps monitor in the corner. So I am like OHHHHH I can just record it with fraps and add my own back track. Well I try doing it and its getting like 15fps over the 30 I need so I say ok I'll restart my computer and only run iTunes.

I restart the computer boot up iTunes and it tells me "Itunes will not run unless you update to 7.42" (Something like that not the normal theres a new version available) so I start running the installer. Then it tells me that it cant find some sort of .ill file that it needs to remove the old version of iTunes.

I was like ohh well Ill just use the older version and I try to boot it up and no go. It wont open keep saying it doesn't have the right files or what have you. At this point I'm a little pissed because 1. I legally own this film and I should be able to do whatever the hell I want with it (Short of illegal copying) without DRM interfering.

Now I cant do anything with iTunes at the moment and I will figure it out later but I had to take fraps to my computers media computer and do it there at a shitty 19 fps because it has an outdated GPU.

Yet another way we are at the mercy of the Factious Dictator known as iTunes.

Seems a little silly to rant about the DRM after buying it. Before you bought it, were you not aware that most of the stuff available on iTunes has DRM?

Ranting about being forced into an upgrade that broke iTunes is fully justified though. :9

Fixed it! I had to use windows clean up to completely remove all apple and itunes related things.

Then threw in a fresh install and all is well.

or you could try a program like tubesucker to snatch the video.

disclaimer: i've never used it. i merely ran into it the other day while looking for something else. seemed like a somewhat useful idea though.

also, you may want to check out amazon's MP3 store they just started. i saw an article like this on google in the middle of last week. prices competitive to itunes, and no MP4 DRM bullshit to deal with.

You can also buy from mp3 stores from other countries. :2

We used to buy from a Russian site, perfectly legal and we bought individual tracks

yep. been down that track also. shame they got punked by the major credit card companies. i tried to get into their site a couple of months ago, and it seemed like they were blocked when i did. their current page looks promising, though.