How to Transfer iTunes Music & Video to Microsoft Surface

About Microsoft Surface

Microsoft Surface is a series of tablets designed and marketed by Microsoft. The Surface comes in two versions, one with Windows RT and another with Windows 8 Pro. The Windows RT model uses an ARM CPU, while the Windows 8 Pro model will use an Intel CPU. Both models are able to install new applications via the Windows Store, however only the Windows 8 Pro model allows the installation of traditional third-party desktop programs.

Music in iTunes Store is in the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) format, which is the MPEG-4-specified successor to MP3. Songs with DRM are encoded at 128 kbit/s. At the January 2009 Macworld Expo, Apple announced that all iTunes music would be made available without DRM, and encoded at the higher-quality rate of 256 kbit/s. However, television episodes, many books, and films are still FairPlay-protected.

So if you want to play iTunes music and video on the Windows tablet, especially Surface with Windows RT, you will need to remove iTunes DRM first. Now let me show you how to remove DRM from iTunes music and video, convert iTunes music and video to plain MP3 and MP4 and transfer iTunes music to Microsoft Surface.

Remove DRM from iTunes music and convert iTunes music to MP3

1. Download and install TuneClone.

2. Create a new playlist in iTunes and add iTunes songs to the playlist.

3. Launch TuneClone. Click the Settings tab. In the pop-up window, specify output folder, output file name format, output format, etc. for the output files.

Note: Check whether TuneClone virtual CD drive is successfully installed and where it is installed at the bottom left corner of the interface. (Very Important)

4. In iTunes, Right click the playlist you just created and choose Burn Playlist to Disc.

5. In the pop-up window of Burn Settings, select TuneClon Virtual_CD-RW from the CD Burner drop-down list, click the radio button next to Audio CD and tick Include CD Text option. Click Burn to start burning.

6. Upon the completion of burning the disc and encoding the music, you can open the TuneClone manager screen to show all the converted music files. To locate the output folder, simply click the Folder tab on the interface.

Remove DRM from iTunes video and convert iTunes video to MP4

Here is the link to how to convert iTunes video to MP4

Transfer Music and Video to Micrsoft Surface

When the iTunes music is converted to MP3 and iTunes video to MP4, you can start to transfer the output music and video files to your Microsoft Surface.

1. Copy music and video files onto a USB flash drive or memory card on another computer.

2. Insert the USB flash drive or memory card into Surface.

3. Tap or click the notification that appears in the upper-right corner of the screen.

4. Tap or click Open folder to view files. File Explorer opens.

5. Select the music and video files you want to add to Surface, tap or click Home, and then tap or click Copy to.

6. Select a location.

How to convert MP4 to MP3?

In this blog, we have talked a lot about converting M4P to MP3. Some of the visitors thought that I could have made a spelling mistake by typing MP4 as M4p. As a matter of fact, the spelling is correct. M4P and MP4 are two different media formats. Let’s take a look first:

What is M4P?

MPEG-4 files with audio streams encrypted by FairPlay Digital Rights Management as sold through the iTunes Store use the .m4p extension. iTunes Plus tracks are unencrypted and use .m4a accordingly.

AAC VS. M4A VS. M4P VS. M4B VS. M4R

What is MP4?

MP4 is the official multimedia container for MPEG-4 video and audio. Although such video can be stored in a number of modern containers, including MPEG-2 PS/TS and Matroska, the development of MP4 is important because it gives hobbyists a replacement for the outdated AVI container which became the standard for MPEG-4 ASP (DivX, XviD, 3IVX, etc,…) video.

So in this post, I’d like to show you how to save MP4 video as MP3 audio. The freeware Clone2Go Free Audio Converter can be used to extract audio from video in a snap:

1. Download and Install Clone2Go Free Audio Converter

Download Link

2. Add MP4 File

Click the “Add Media Files” button to import MP4 files. Alternatively, you can click “File -> Add Media Files…” to add MP4 files. You can also directly drag and drop MP4 files to the left panel of the program.

3. Choose MP3 as Output Format

From the “Profile” drop-down list, choose MP3 – MPEG Layer-3 Audio (*.mp3) as the output format.

4. Start Converting MP4 to MP3

Click the “Start Encode” button to start to convert MP4 to MP3.

How to Convert DRM Protected iTunes M4V to MP4

We have shared with you how to convert DRM protected iTunes M4P to MP3 using TuneClone. But you may have noticed that you could only follow this guide to convert iTunes music. If you also have some movies, TV series, music videos purchased and downloaded from iTunes Store, you may be looking for a way to transfer them to a non-Apple device as well.

So why can’t you directly transfer iTunes videos to a non-Apple device? It is due that Apple uses the M4V files to encode TV episodes, movies, and music videos in the iTunes Store. The copyright of M4V files may be protected by using Apple’s FairPlay DRM copyright protection. To play a protected M4V file, the computer needs to be authorized (using iTunes) with the account that was used to purchase the video. Thus, the iTune M4V files cannot be recognized and played by other video players than Apple devices like iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.

The DRM Media Converter adopts the technology of record play and save the recording to get iTunes video files converted to plain MP4 files. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step guide of converting DRM protected iTunes M4V to MP4 using this converter.

1. Download DRM Media Converter, install and launch it.

Download Link (13.1 MB)

2. Import DRM iTunes M4V files

You can import DRM iTunes M4V files in three ways:

a. Load files by clicking the “Add…” button.

b. Directly drag and drop files to the left main window.

c. Right click on the left main window and click “Add files”.

3. Select output format

By clicking the “Video files to:” box, you can select output format for the source DRM iTunes M4V files. For example, if you want to convert DRM iTunes M4V to MP4, you can choose “Common Video” from drop-down list and choose “MP4 Video” as the output format.

Note: This DRM Media Converter also allows you to customize the video and audio parameters for the output files if the default settings don’t fit your needs. Just click the “Settings…” button to adjust the video and audio parameters.

4. Start to convert DRM iTunes M4V to MP4

Click the “Start” button to begin to convert DRM iTunes M4V to MP4.

Customize your conversion using the three tabs located in the Options menu:

a. From the General tab, specify your preferred destination folder for saving output files.

b. From the DRM Finder tab, customize search parameters for the DRM Finder tool.

c. From the Processing tab, set the program to perform up to five parallel conversions.

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To convert DRM protected iTunes M4V to MP4 on a Mac, please refer to: How to remove DRM from iTunes video on Mac

To convert DRM protected iTunes M4P to MP3 on a Mac, please refer to: How to remove DRM from iTunes music on Mac

To find a better video/audio DRM removal tool, please refer to: Best DRM removal software review