TTFN: How to Make a Free iPhone Ringtone Using iTunes

TTFN: How to Make a Free iPhone Ringtone Using iTunes
Thursday, August 27, 2009
By Calpernia Addams

Tech Tips for Nerds (TTFN) is my series of blog posts where I share the information I obtained after laborious Google searching for some tech problem or other. Ignore these if you’re not nerdily inclined, I’m just archiving them here to help the next Google searcher.

The other day I turned the Sad Laugh of Woody Woodpecker into my ringtone for certain callers, by exporting the audio and converting it into a ringtone for my jailbroken iPhone. Then I wanted to do another one today and had already forgotten how I did it the last time. That’s why I’m doing the whole TTFN series, to archive this kind of info, so after another laborious Google search I figured it out again. The other way involved dragging something into my phone’s directory structure directly, but this one is easier and you don’t even have to jailbreak your phone! Here’s the info, found at http://modmyi.com/forums/ringtone-alert-sounds/288871-diy-how-make-ringtone-under-60-seconds-nothing-but-itunes.html:

PROBLEM: Turn hilarious clip of Cal-pal Selene Luna screaming “CLOWWWWNNN-LOTTTTT” into a ringtone I can assign to her contact in my iPhone.

SOLUTION:

* Select the song in iTunes that I want to use as a ringtone. Protected AAC files will not work.
* Right-click on the song and select Get Info
* Go to the Options page and select the start and end times for the ringtone, also use treble boost on the EQ setting and slide the volume slider to 100%
* Right-click on the song again and select Convert Selection to AAC. (Cal sez: if you don’t see that option when you right-click, you’ll need to go into iTunes>>Preferences>>General>>Import Settings>>”Import Using: AAC Encoder”) and you’ll probably then want to go back and reset it to MP3 once you’re done.)
* Right-click on the converted song and select Show in Finder
* Drag the .m4a file from the Finder window to your desktop
* Go back to iTunes and delete the converted song from iTunes. If you skip this step, double clicking on the .m4r file to import the ringtone into iTunes will not work properly.
* Right-click on the song file on your desktop, select Get Info and change the file extension from .m4a to m4r.
* Open Finder and locate the Ringtones folder underneath your iTunes folder. The path should be /Users/~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Ringtones. If you don’t have this folder, create it.
* Drag the renamed song file from your desktop to the Ringtones folder in Finder.
* Double-click on the .m4r file now stored inside the Ringtones folder. iTunes should change to the Ringtones folder under Library near the top and start playing the ringtone.
* Drag the ringtone to your phone.

This method originally surfaced on a post made by jkwuc89 on another site way back in 2007, Then One1 on modmyi.com tweaked it and put a video with it. Want other options? Look here: http://gizmodo.com/298649/how-to-8-ways-to-get-ringtones-onto-your-iphone
Related posts

* Perry Twins, Billie Meyers and Erin Foley (0)
* OMG I finally got an iPhone (3)

Tags: iPhone, itunes, m4r, ringtone