Tricking iTunes for free ringtones (Windows)

First off, you need to go into your iTunes preferences and make sure that you have the AAC converter turned on. To check, go into the iTunes preferences and click on the 'Advanced' tab. Click the 'Importing' tab and under 'Import Using' should say 'AAC Encoder'.







It's all set right? Sweet! Now pick a song that you want to get a 30 second clip from. Right click on the song and select 'Get Info' from the menu.



Just for simplicity sake, lets just say that you want the first 30 seconds of the song. You will click on the 'Options' tab and change the Start and Stop time. Click the checkboxes and change the Stop time to 0:30. Feel free to use any 30 second segment that you wish. Just note the start time and add 30 seconds to it for the stop time.



The hard part is done! Now just exit out of the 'Get Info' screen and right click on the song that you just modified and select 'Convert Selection to AAC' from the menu. Let iTunes work it's magic.



You will get a second song in your iTunes library ... but it will only be 30 seconds long! You can right click and select 'Get Info' and change some tags to make it easier to find in your iTunes library. I like to change the artist and genre to 'Ringtones' so that I know right where to find it.



Exit iTunes. Locate the file in your iTunes music directory and rename the .m4a extension to .m4r.


Once you have renamed the file, just double click on it so that it adds itself to your iTunes library again ... but this time as a ringtone!! iTunes will launch, and the ringtone you just created will appear in the Ringtones list. If for some reason you are having an issue with this the first time, you might want to check in your iTunes preferences and see if you have the “Keep iTunes Music Folder Organized” option checked. Having that checked will automatically create a ringtone folder for you.



An alternative to the double click method is to simply open iTunes, open your ringtones library and then drag the .m4r file from windows explorer or finder (on mac) into the ringtone library. Either method should work.

Make sure "Manually manage music and video" is unchecked if you are in the new itunes.
Works in my jailbroken 1.1.3.