Cristina writes, “I am making a Christmas slide show on my Windows Movie Maker but it absolutely will NOT let me import ANY of my Christmas music and U think I’ve tried everything. I tried dragging it from iTunes. I made a new folder on my desktop and tried getting the songs from there and still did NOT import. Now I understand that if the song is downloaded from a source it won’t import because of its format but my songs are actually from a CD so I’m not sure what to do anymore.”
Since you’re importing songs from iTunes and they don’t work, I’m going to assume you also ripped the CD of Christmas songs using iTunes. If you purchased the tracks from iTunes, you’ll need to download SoundTaxi to convert them because the method described below won’t work with iTunes purchased tracks.
By default, iTunes rips CDs to the AAC format, which is a great format for storing music, but is also incompatible with Windows Movie Maker. There are two ways to solve your problem:
1) Convert the AAC file to MP3 with iTunes
By default, iTunes rips all CDs to AAC format. You can use iTunes to convert AAC files to MP3, but you need to make a few changes in iTunes first. To convert an AAC file to MP3 with iTunes follow these steps:
Open iTunes Preferences from Edit > Preferences. Click the Advanced tab and choose the Importing sub-tab. On the Import Using dropdown list, choose MP3 Encoder and click OK.
Now right-click the music file you want to convert to MP3 in your iTunes Music Library and choose Convert Selection to MP3.
Next right-click the MP3 file and choose Show in Windows Explorer, then drag and drop the MP3 file into Windows Movie Maker to use in your video project.
2) Re-rip the CD as MP3 files
Your other option is to re-rip the entire CD as MP3 files instead of AAC files. Just like the other option above you must first configure iTunes to convert CDs to MP3.
Open iTunes Preferences from Edit > Preferences. Click the Advanced tab and choose the Importing sub-tab. On the Import Using dropdown list, choose MP3 Encoder and click OK.
Now import the CD into iTunes as MP3 files. Right-click the MP3 file you want to use in your movie and choose Show in Windows Explorer. Drag and drop the MP3 file into Windows Movie Maker to use in your video project.
If your file was purchased from iTunes Music Store, you might need something like SoundTaxi to convert the song to an MP3. SoundTaxi isn’t free but it will get you a file that works with Windows Movie Maker.
