If you are a fond of customizing your ringtones, here is the steps to create iphone ringtones with just using iTunes.
First, choose the song and mark the position (in seconds) to be extracted as the ringtone (keep in mind that Apple restrict the length of the ringtone to 40 seconds, though I find it best to use 39 seconds).
Then make sure in iTunes preference you are using the AAC encoder for its import settings. You can know it by right clicking one of the songs and will see “Create AAC Version”, “Create MP3 Version” or other encoder settings.
You can go to preference by pressing Command+ ‘ , ‘ (in mac) or Control+ ‘ , ‘ (in windows), then in “General” tab, down under you will find “Import Settings“. You might want to set under “Setting” as “High Quality” (as it will result in smaller file size) compare to “iTunes Plus” as in the screenshot below.
Once you have set as above, right click on the chosen song and click “Get Info“, go to “Options” tab. You will see in the middle section a “Start Time” and “Stop Time“. Here is the place to key in the marking point from point number 1 and place both the check mark beside them. If the starting point does not exactly start in the exact second, you can add a period and experiment yourself, something like 1:00.500 (I would assume this would be around 1minute and half a second). For this example, I am just going to key in 1:00 as the starting point and 1:39 as the end point. After that click OK at the bottom.
Next, right click the song again and select “Create ACC Version“. It will only take a few seconds to complete.
Once it is completed, you will see two of the same title with just a different time length.
I am sorry to say but it is not done yet. Next, right click the “ringtone” (the shorter version) and click “Show in Finder” (in mac) or “Show/View in Explorer” (in windows). You can delete the “ringtone” from your music library, then go to finder/explorer and rename the extension from the default .m4a to .m4r (and accept any prompt to use the new file extension for the file). In windows, by default, file extensions is hidden, you should enable it by going to Tools – Folder Options (if I remember correctly).
Once renamed, drag it back to iTunes and it will automatically be place to the “Ringtones” section (if it does not appear there, probably because you have not deleted the file from the library as noted before).
Next, plug in your iPhone if it is not, click on your iPhone on the left and go to “Ringtones” tab and you will see the (list of) ringtones. You have the option to sync all the ringtones or choose individually.
When synchronized, you will find it available on your iPhone. You need to go to Settings – Sounds – Ringtone and you will see the synchronized ringtones.
Now we are done. Hopefully this guide is clear enough to guide you to customize your iPhone ringtones.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Ko Mike,
use audiko.net for much easier way to create your ringtones
thanks Ron, audiko.net indeed has a lot of ringtone already created for us. For songs that are not available or prefer different section, I rather do it offline from iTunes.
tapi kan bisa kita upload music kita lalu bisa crop sendiri which 30 secs (or less) part that we want.
Much easier …
true Ron, but not that practical for those who still use a ‘slow’ internet connection
I want to thank the blogger very much not only for this post but also for his all previous efforts. I found weuseiphone.com to be very interesting. I will be coming back to weuseiphone.com for more information.