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Depending on how many songs you have that you want to load up to Media Player, there are a few ways to do it.

Burn Tracks to CD

If you can get into iTunes, the easiest way to move music is to burn it to a CD. There is an option in iTunes to convert your music to MP3 files, but if you click on it from a direct iTunes download, you will get the message: Protected files cannot be converted to other formats. If you burn the music to a CD first, it will convert the music to MP3 files when you open the CD in iTunes. In iTunes:

1. Go to Edit, then Preferences and then General.
2. Click on Import Settings, then click Ok.
3. Right click on a music track and you can convert to MP3.

If you have a lot of music, it will take a lot of CDs to get them converted. In this case, you can do pretty much the same thing with a virtual CD drive such as CD Emulator. You can find CD Emulator here: http://www.ztekware.com/ .

Music Bridge

If you have your iTunes files on your hard drive, you can run a synchronization program called Music Bridge. It does not copy the data, rather it duplicates the meta-data between Media Player and iTunes. Check here: http://jrmwillis.googlepages.com/ and see if that is an option for you.

M4a Software

There is software that says it will copy the contents of your iPod to any folder on your computer. I haven’t used it personally, but I haven’t seen anything negative regarding this software. There is a free trial download here:

http://www.ipod-computer.com/iPod-Transfer/index.html?ad=adsense&gclid=CIKf1-ucuZYCFSJIagod4ih0Kw .

3ivx has software that will let you convert .m4a files for personal use. It has you choose what operating system you are running and then download the program for $19.95. Find that here: http://store.3ivx.com/3ivxStore/ .

Fixing QuickTime

I’m wondering if you fully uninstalled QuickTime before you attempted a reinstall. If you left traces of the original program, it won’t reinstall properly. After you uninstall QuickTime, you need to run the Windows Installer CleanUp Utility:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/290301 . You will select QuickTime from the list of installed applications and then click Ok. This will remove all traces and allow for a clean install of a new version. In the end, this may be the best solution so that you can get iTunes back on your machine and not worry about converting your files.

Editing Videos in Movie Maker

Windows Movie Maker is a basic video editor that comes preinstalled on Windows Vista. When editing, you have two views to choose from: Timeline or Storyboard. These views show you the frames of the clips in the center of the screen with a bar below where you drag and drop your scenes. Off to the right side of the screen is the preview monitor section where you can see the video in motion.

In Timeline view, you see several “tracks” such as audio, video, and titles laid out in a linear fashion. In the Storyboard view, you see a series of frames representing each scene. To change the view, go to the View menu and choose the view that you prefer. When in either of these views, you can edit the video and add the various effects. As you work, you will want to save your file frequently.

Saving Videos in Movie Maker

It’s important to note that when you save a video in Movie Maker, this is not the same thing as “publishing” the file. For example, when you say the size of the video is 521 KB, I immediately suspected that you must be mistaken as that is incredibly small. Most digital videos are in the gigabyte range. I have a 17 minute AVI video on my computer that is 3.4 gigabytes large. However, the Movie Maker file for that same video is well under a megabyte. The Movie Maker file is not the same as the finished video file that you will download and distribute. The Movie Maker file usually ends with the MSWMM file extension and represents the instructions that your software will eventually follow to create the finished video. Your finished video will eventually end with a file extension of .AVI, .WMV, or .MPG depending on the choices you make.

Publishing the Video

Depending on the ultimate format desired, you will need to “publish” your edited video. For example, if you want to have a DVD copy of the video, then you will publish the video to DVD. If you want to e-mail the video, you would choose the e-mail option. Look on the left side of the Movie Maker screen. There, you’ll see a Tasks list. Go down to the Publish section and click on your desired choice (Publish to: This Computer, DVD, Recordable CD, E-mail, or Digital Video Camera).

Once you make your selection, follow the prompts. For example, when publishing to DVD, you will be prompted to allow Movie Maker to close and Windows DVD Maker to open. No matter which option that you choose, expect the computer to take a long time to compile the video and create the finished file. I highly recommend that you close out ALL other programs and let your computer do this overnight without any interruptions, especially if the video is long.