How to Create a Free iPhone Ringtone from a Video

Having an iPhone ringtone from a song is all well and good, but what if you want to make a ringtone from a video? Perhaps you want some music or the theme from a TV show, or a memorable clip of a film to use as an alarm on your iPhone. With the free software already on your computer, you can cut out part of a video's audio and make it a ringtone!

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. 
    

   Open your video file in Quicktime. Move the timeline markers to the area you want to use for your ringtone. For more precise cuts, you can can click and hold on a marker while tapping the arrow keys on your keyboard. When you've got twenty or thirty seconds of video selected, go to Edit in the menubar and click "Trim to Selection".

2. 
    

   Now we need to strip the video out. Go to "File" in the menubar and click "Export..." Choose your save location, and then select "Sound to Wave" from the Export dropdown. Click the "Save" button to export the audio.

3. 
    

   If you'd like to edit the audio in any way, you can do that by importing your wav in an external editor like Garageband. Assuming you're done with that or don't need to edit it, open the wav file in iTunes.

4. 
    

   In iTunes, go to your Preferences. Click the "Import Settings" button. Change the Import Using option to AAC Encoder. Select "High Quality" as your setting. If you want something more specific, you can choose "Custom" to set the bitrate, sample rate, channels, etc. Hit the "OK" button when you're done.

5. 
    

   Right click on your file in iTunes, and select "Create AAC Version". This will make another version of your file.

6. 
    

   Right click on the new file and select "Show in Finder". This will bring up a finder window with your file highlighted.

7. 
    

   Rename the extension from m4a to m4r. This will enable iTunes to read the file as a ringtone file.

8. 
    

   Drag the new m4r file into iTunes to save your ringtone. It will show up in the ringtone option on the left hand side. If you don't have a ringtone option, you can enable it in the Preferences menu.

Tips & Warnings

• You only need your m4r file for the ringtone. You can delete the wav and any other loose files.
• When you remove the AAC file in iTunes, make sure to tell the program to KEEP the file. Otherwise it will delete your ringtone.

[klnygaard]

on 5/14/2009 Nicely wrotten article about i phone ringtone