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..and the tools you’ll need to actually use the stuff you legally own..

My first experience with music DRM (Digital Rights Management) finds me agreeing with much negative comment about it out there on the Internet..

Being a Bigpond customer (not for much longer) I decided to give Bigpond Music a go.. seemed an ok deal.. an album of music for about A$15..

Well, as an aside, the Bigpong Music site pretty well sucks too. It doesn’t work properly in Firefox – *sigh* – haven’t any of their developers looked at browser statistics recently? And why do I have to download every track individually when I’ve bought an album? I could go on…

Anyway, having finally downloaded my album tracks and licences, I can play them in exactly one player – Windows Media Player. This is licenced content and will not play in MusicMatch, iTunes or Media Monkey… and can I play them on my MP3 player? Definitely not.. So at this point I’m sure you find yourself asking yourself the same question I did – what bloody good are downloaded digital music tracks if I can only play them in one player on my PC?

Morally I have no problem with the fact that I am entitled to use content I have paid for on any media/device I wish.

This was not law in Australia however. ‘Fair Use’ was quite restrictive and, as I understand it, by the ‘letter of the law’, you were not even entitled to time-shift TV (e.g using your VCR or DVD-R was illegal). You were certainly not entitled to rip your CDs to MP3.

Australian copyright and intellectual property laws have been under review for the last year or so and it seems that the Copyright Amendment Act 2006 is now in force. A useful guide (pdf) covering new time-shifting and space-shifting provisions in the Act is available from the Australian Copyright Council. The short version seems to be that time-shifting, space-shifting, including format-shifting, are now legal.. whoopee.. only 10 years behind the times.. but better late than never.

Shifting Tools

This, of course, applies to stuff you legally own… pirating software, music, video or anything else is still theft..

Music to MP3. So the first tool you should be investigating is one to shift your protected music downloads onto your MP3 player. I settled on SoundTaxi after reading various reviews etc. So my first album downloaded to my MP3 player actually cost me A$33 (A$15 music + A$18 SoundTaxi, US$14.95).. I wasn’t happy. Tunebite seems quite a popular tool similar to SoundTaxi.

Video to DVD. The next tool you need to consider, if you buy video online (unprotected WMV, AVI etc), is one which can re-format that material onto DVD-R so you can watch the stuff in your standard DVD player. I’ve used a few and settled on ConvertXtoDVD (US$40) as the trial worked easily. I’ve since had a couple of burning issues with it and tend to burn the result with Nero.

DVD to Video. Recently I’ve found the want to format-shift stuff recorded on my DVD Recorder from DVD-R to a computer video format (e.g. AVI). I have just tried BitRipper which is not fast but seems to do the job nicely for a free tool.

Music & Video Tools – General

To round this out, here are the tools I generally use for audio and/or video on a PC:

• Media Monkey (mp3 library and player)
• Core Media Player (plays just about anything, particularly if you add in a codec pack like the one below)
• K-Lite Codec Pack (video/audio codecs, all-in-one pack)
• GSpot Codec Information Appliance (if you don’t know what video file you’re looking at this should tell you)

[update 21June2007]

To round this out also check whether you have a need for:

• VLC player (covers off those things that Core Media Player wont do)
• Real Alternative (if you are ‘over’ RealMedia Player fat-ware)
  
• Quicktime Alternative (if you are over the iTunes thing..)