Posted Wednesday, April 30, 2003

Upgrade to QuickTime 6.2 Before Using Purchased Music in iMovie or iPhoto

A reader writes with an interesting question: "I've downloaded a few songs from the music store and am impressed with the sound. Is there a way, or will there soon be a way to import these AAC files into iMovie? My iMovie doesn't seem to recognize them."

I tried importing some of the tunes I've bought into iMovie -- and had no luck. iTunes 4's Purchased Music playlist appears in iMovie's audio browser, but an error message appeared when I tried to play or import an AAC track.

Curious, I moved over to iPhoto, where I encountered the same behavior: purchased music shows up, but it doesn't work in slideshows or when exporting to a QuickTime movie.

The solution is to upgrade to QuickTime 6.2. This new update doesn't yet show up in Mac OS X's Software Update mechanism, so you must download it manually from the Apple Web site.

At first, I feared that the inability to use purchased music in iMovie or iPhoto was due to the copy protection built into AAC tracks. It's good to see this isn't the case, and that the music you buy through iTunes can be used in your other iLife endeavors.