Export Pro

Apple is abandoning us! kJams relies on QuickTime to handle media. Please sign the petition!

Preparation

You must select the output format in the QuickTime Export Preferences pane:

In the Lite version, simply pick the iPod preset that you want. In the Pro version, First pick the encoder you want, then under that, pick the preset you want, or create a new one. You can edit the preset by pressing the "Edit…" button. kJams ships with several presets defined for each encoder, (or just one when only one really makes sense). You can pick the encoder and preset only once if you like, and never worry about it again, until you want to export a different format. The four buttons, "New…", "Duplicate", "Rename…", and "Delete" apply to the preset files. Your presets are stored in the kJams preferences folder (currently ~/Preferences/kJams/Export/).

Caveats

• You must use the FPS menu in the prefs window, if you use the one INSIDE the QuickTime Settings dialog, it will be ignored.
  
• Meta info is stored only in QuickTime .mov and MPEG-4 (iPod, AppleTV, iPhone) files. If you export to any other format, currently meta info is set using Xattr tagging. You can optionaly export the XML file which has all the meta data.
• You can only export Audio+G files (ie: you can't export a song who's source is a QuickTime movie, divx file, mpeg file etc, please request that feature if you want it)

Export

You can export directly from a CD, or Audio+G Tracks from your library.
Select the song(s) you want to convert to QuickTime, then go:

File->Export->Selection as QuickTime...

If there are songs already currently exporting, the new songs will go to the same folder, else you will be asked to pick a folder for the destination.

Each song will then be exported using your chosen exporter.

You can then double click the resulting files to open in QuickTime Player or iTunes, depending on which encoder you chose in the QuickTime Export Preferences pane.

Special Considerations

There is no limit to the number of songs you can export simultaneously, however your computer will probably start to get real slow if you're exporting a bunch at once. If this is an issue for you, let me know and I'll put in a pref to let the user specify the maximum number to export at once, that way you can cue up 100 songs for export, but only say 5 will actually export at a time (or however many you specify)

If you choose iPhone (Cellular) as the Movie Encoder, the resulting file will be about half the size (MB), but audio quality is greatly reduced.

To get it onto your Video iPod or iPhone or AppleTV

1. Go to Preferences->Export and pick "iPod", "iPhone" or "AppleTV" as the encoder. (Do NOT pick "iPhone (Cellular)")
2. Select the song(s) you want to export
3. File->Export->Selection as QuickTime, save it on your desktop or wherever you like
4. In the Finder, select the resulting movie(s), right click and pick "Open With->iTunes"
5. Once you're in iTunes with your video, drag the video to your iPod, iPhone, or AppleTV, and sync

Extra Credit

There are secret prefs available that complement "Only export short sample" that lets you specify the duration of the sample before fading to black. In the prefs file, find "QT Export sample actual duration (seconds)", set that to the duration in seconds, you may specify a floating point number, eg: 20.25 for 20 and one quarter seconds. You can even specify a special export name template for the samples, separate from regular QT Export name templates, that is "QT Sample Export Name Template", and if you feel really adventurous, you can even try to set the meta data in your sample exports by setting "QT Export set meta data" to true. When you have set "Only export short sample" to true, then if you hold the OPTION key while you pick export from the menu, then you'll get a dialog where you can specify right there the duration of the export. It will then use this number for all future sample exports.