Your own ringtone from a disc
The first dance at your wedding, a song from your child's school concert, the opening theme of a programme you recorded from TV: these often live on DVDs and in .mpg or .ts files. An iPhone cannot play those files, but it can use their sound as a ringtone. When you convert MPEG to M4R, the tool extracts the sound, keeps up to 40 seconds and saves it as AAC audio with the .m4r extension that iOS uses for ringtones.
How the 40-second limit works
iOS accepts ringtones of up to 40 seconds. You can either enter a start time, such as 2:15, and get the 40 seconds that follow, or set both start and end in Trim & tags for a shorter tone. Short text tones of 2 to 5 seconds can be made the same way.
Tips for a ringtone that works well:
- Start at a recognisable, loud moment. Slow intros make the phone seem silent at first.
- Avoid parts with applause or talking over the music, which are common in live DVD recordings.
- If the recording has quiet and loud parts, choose a steady section.
What happens to the sound
The MP2, Dolby Digital or PCM track of the MPEG is decoded by the built-in converter engine, because browsers cannot read these formats, and encoded as AAC. A DVD's 5.1 sound becomes a regular ringtone that plays through the iPhone speaker. All processing happens on your computer.
Adding the ringtone to your iPhone
- Connect the iPhone to your computer with a cable.
- On a Mac, open Finder and select the iPhone. On a Windows PC, use iTunes or the Apple Devices app.
- Drag the .m4r file onto the iPhone.
- On the iPhone, open Settings, then Sounds and Haptics, then Ringtone, and select it.
For the full song as a music file, use MPEG to M4A. For an older non-Apple phone, see MPEG to MMF.