Table of Contents |
| File Editing - Sound Editor

Overview Image Editor Sound Editor Text Editor Property Editor

Please read the overview for information about the common features of iFuntastic's editors.
The Sound Editor allows you do some basic sound editing on a variety of source sound files. You can crop (pick a section of) the sound and set fade in and fade out, and adjust the volume. The number of output formats is much more limited, but is sufficient for the sounds used on the iPhone or iPod.
Input Format
Thanks to the versatility of QuickTime, you can use the most common sound formats and even movie files as the source.
Files with extension .m4p are DRM protected AAC files and cannot be edited by iFuntastic. However, there are a couple of workarounds:
1) you can burn the file to an audio CD, or
2) you can import it into an empty movie project in iMovie (at least one video clip is required, which, luckily, can also be any imported photo) and then export the movie as a QuickTime movie in CD-ROM quality. Then select the resulting movie as the source file in the sound editor. This is a pain, but you save yourself an audio CD.
3) in fairness, I should mention that you can now also get the unprotected file through iTunes (for 30 cents.)
Output Format Menu
You can choose the destination format from the format menu. Some destinations (such as ringtones,) have an implied, fixed format. Some formats are compressed (smaller files, decreased quality) and others are uncompressed (larger files, unchanged quality.) iFuntastic uses iTunes to convert to the MP3 format - this, unfortunately, results in the sounds being added to your iTunes library, so you will have to perform an occasional cleanup. iFuntastic uses afconvert for AAC and WAV formats, and ffmpeg (if available,) to convert to AMR format. Please refer to the Voicemail Greeting page (iPhone only) for more details on the AMR format and ffmpeg.
Maximum Duration
Set the maximum duration for the sound. You can change it in 10 second increments up to a minute. The Sound Editor is intended for ringtones and system sounds which are fairly short. Ringtones in the Custom List must be 40 seconds or less or they will not be synced by iTunes. Sounds that are too long compared to the originals they replace may have trouble playing or cause other problems on the iPhone or iPod.
Sound Window
The top slider is a 'window' into the selected sound file. The size of the window is determined by the maximum duration. You can change the location by dragging the window along the file. The sound will play as long as the mouse is down - that is, you can 'scrub' through the sound.
Edit Window
The selected window is enlarged and put into the second slider. Drag the start and end points to the desired position. A few seconds of sound are played repeatedly around the start or end point to help in determining the position. Click on the left or right ear and hold down to play the sound around the start or end points. When you let go, the respective point is set 'by ear'.
Play Button
Click the 'Play' button to start or stop playing the current sound.
Note that you will not hear the final quality, only the fade in and out, cropping and volume adjustment.
Fading Controls
Set the fade in duration at the beginning of the sound and the fade out duration at the end of the sound to a value between 0 to 2 seconds.
Volume Adjustment
You can adjust the relative volume of the sound with the Volume Adjustment Slider. A value of 10 means 'unchanged'; values between 10 and 9 decrease the volume all the way down to 'silent'. With a fond nod to This Is Spinal Tap (check it out, it's hilarious!) you can increase the volume up to 11. Beware of distortion - even if it sounds OK through your speakers, it may sound distorted on the iPhone or iPod.
Artist and Title
iFuntastic tries to read and write the artist and title of a sound file. Reading is attempted for AAC and MP3 formats; writing works for the AAC format only. Single and double quotes in the artist and title fields are replaced by spaces to avoid problems. When saving ringtones to the Custom List, the title field is used for the name, since the file name is changed to conform to the iPhone's scheme. For ringtones, the title should not contain any special XML characters (<, >, & and such.)
Destination Menu
Choose from the fixed destinations to save ringtones into either the custom or the standard list on the iPhone, or the Ringtones (m4r) folder on disk.