NimbleMusic announced today that it has launched several new services to help consumers convert and load their music, photo, home movie and DVD collections onto today’s personal media players like the video iPod and Sony’s PSP. This is the first such service offering — to convert every media type, under one roof — of its kind in the US, according to the company.
“NimbleMusic’s philosophy is that no personal media gets left behind in the iPod era,” said Peter Haimovitz, president of NimbleMusic., in the press release “Do-it-yourself conversion, ripping and player loading is time-consuming, technically challenging and easily left undone or incomplete. Making the process simple — by staying on top of evolving technology, streamlining the ordering and service packaging, and delivering the highest quality conversions — is NimbleMusic’s value,” continued Haimovitz.
“Today’s powerful new personal media players — extremely portable and brimming with storage — is the ideal platform on which the soundtrack and cinema of your life converge. Our all-media approach to conversion and loading makes the whole tedious process simple,” asserts Haimovitz. “NimbleMusic’s services enable its customers to preserve and easily transport all of their personal media.”
NimbleMusic new media ripping and loading services include: DVD & CD ripping, LP & Cassette to Digital Conversion, and Videocassette & Film to Digital Conversion. Device loading is included in all services. Supported players include Apple’s iPod and other devices. NimbleMusic will also load external/portable hard drives, Apple Mac Mini’s, media PC’s, or media servers.
Lisa Greenberg, a regional business manager from Apple’s Business Agent Program, says in the press release, “NimbleMusic’s business model is terrific, these services provide real value to our iPod customers.”
NimbleMusic’s services include:
• DVD Ripping Service: Most people don’t have the right technology, the know-how, or the time and patience to convert their DVDs into the appropriate digital formats to play on their iPod or other personal media player. Service includes: custom packing kit to safely ship your store-bought DVDs; DVDs are converted to your personal media player’s required digital video file format; new digital video files loaded onto your portable media player, external/portable hard drive, Mac Mini, media PC, or media server.
• CD Ripping Service: Anyone can rip a CD, but if you have over fifty, it becomes tedious, very time-consuming and more than likely poorly done. Service includes: a custom packing kit to safely ship your CDs; CDs are converted to MP3 or equivalent; new digital library organized by song, artist, album and genre is loaded onto your personal media player, MP3 player, external/portable hard drive, Mac Mini, media PC, or media server; digital song library is burned onto DVD-Rs for easy back up and loading onto your computer. This popular, high-quality service has been available since October of ’05.
• LP & Cassette Conversion Service: Converting old records and tapes to digital music files take a lot of time, patience, equipment and technical know-how. Service includes: custom packing kit to safely ship your records and tapes; physical cleaning of each LP or cassette; LP/cassette tracks converted to lossless (WAV, AIFF) or compressed (MP3, AAC) digital formats; filtering software to remove most pops/clicks/scratches on LPs and hiss build-up on tapes; album tracks burned to audio CD, song tracks burned to data DVD-R or both; new digital library loaded onto your personal media player, MP3 player external/portable hard drive, Mac Mini, media PC, or media server; your records and tapes repacked and shipped back.
• Film to Digital Conversion Service: Converting home movies (8mm, Super8 and 16mm) to the digital format of your personal media player or burning a playable DVD requires sophisticated video equipment, special software, a fast computer, a lot of hard drive space and a good bit of technical know-how. Service includes: custom packing kit to safely ship your movie reels; transfer of your film using our unique digital film transfer to ensure that the quality of your film is completely maintained; technology that guarantees the most exact transfer of your movies so that no color, light or speed is compromised in the transfer process; music, titles, backgrounds added to converted film; movies converted to MP4 format, burned onto playable DVDs or data DVD-Rs and loaded onto your personal media player, external/portable hard drive, Mac Mini, media pc or media server.
• Video Tape to Digital Conversion Service: Converting old videocassettes to a playable DVD or to the format of your personal media player requires lots of time and a good amount of audio/video/computer savvy. Service includes: custom packing kit to safely ship your videocassettes; converts and preserves your movies in the MPEG2 format which is used for DVD and high definition video; movies converted to MP4 format, burned onto playable DVDs, and loaded onto your personal media player, external/portable hard drive, Mac Mini, media PC media server.
All of NimbleMusic’s conversion services are available now. Pricing is based upon the quantity and type of conversions requested. More info: http://www.nimblemusic.com/
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I have ripped 1200 of my cds onto my computer and it didn’t seem bad enough that I’d want to spend any money on such a service. I’d rather use that money to buy more cd’s or iTunes downloads.
Pretty pricey…
Is it really that hard to put a CD into your computer and let iTunes import it? And for DVDs, how ’bout Handbrake?
Is this news? or an advertisement?
RELEASE THE UPDATES!
Given that you cannot legally rip a DVD in many countries (in spite of either legislated or implied right of ownership to make back-up copies in many of the same countries), how can this service operate within the law?
Some might find this service valuable. Ripping CD’s into one’s computer is relatively simple, given the iTunes jukebox software. Converting 16mm, 8mm, or Super 8 film, or LPs/audio cassettes/video cassettes is a bit more challenging. I happen to enjoy using my Mac to accomplish these tasks, but others in my family think I’m crazy (but they all want copies of the resurrected family movies and tapes!).
FInding a working 8mm / Super 8 projector with appropriate replacement bulbs is getting harder and harder. Some may want to take advantage of this company’s services to avoid the hassles of procuring their own vintage equipment.
i’ve used http://www.ripdigital.com and they’re great. they’ll rip in any format you want (AAC 256 was my choice)
What kind of iPod are they showing on their site? A video Nano?
Is this news? or an advertisement?
Neither. It’s a press release.
It took me over a month to rip all my CDs. Now I have more time than money so this was no problem, but I can definitely see the value in the service. I may take them up on the LP ripping service.
Now if I can just find someone to convert all my reel-to-reel tapes I’d be set.
I have some old player piano rolls – can they rip them to my nano?
I am sure MDN will have a link to this on Friday some time, but in the meantime if you are going to do ALL the updates and have an Intel Mac – CLONE YOUR HD BEFORE APPLYING THEM. Some PPC users have had problems as well – AGAIN, CLONE YOUR DRIVE PRIOR TO INSTALLING OS AND SECURITY UPDATES. Read here – there are some solutions that seem to work for some:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=477248&tstart=0
Mine seems to be running with no problems, but I have a clone so I don’t have any worries
To all of you who say “who needs this?”…
Try ripping 300 CDs on a three-year old Windows box, especially a laptop.
A permutation of three things are possible: –
1) You’ll lose the will to live.
2) You’ll lose the will for whoever sold you the computer to live.
3) You’ll go and buy a Mac
Just like the “real” world doesn’t end at US border crossings, the “virtual” world doesn’t end at a Mac (although the latter is obviously something to be sad about).
“To Back up or DIE!”
The culprit has been found: remove Adobe Version Cue from the startup items before applying the updates. It is the one causing the issue.
Also mine had no trouble but colleagues with Adobe Version Cue fell into the problem. Removing it saved the day.
According to NimbleMusic WMA files do not play on iPods!?!?!? (check out their FAQ)
I expect MDN will call for a fatwa on these knuckle heads for being so completely and utterly stupid to make this simple mistake!
What?
No?
That’s right – they only reserve that for SOME people.
I’d expect that anyone that reads their site would get the impression they KNOW what they are talking about, so for them to make this error is actually MORE damaging than some tech writer hack (which most people know means they have a part time job at their local newspaper) spreading this FUD that iPods are not compatible with almost every popular format (though I’d be happy if they dropped WMA for OGG).
Luke
back in da day…. i recorded music onto cassette tapes and reel to reels. THAT was time consuming as all recording was done in real time and you had to adjust levels for different songs AND be sure you cleaned the tape heads AND clean the records AND flip the albums from one side to another AND flip the cassette or reverse the reel… etc cetera. recording 3 albums took over three hours if you did it right and if you were making a personal mix it was even more time consuming.
by comparison, ripping, mixing and burning a CD takes almost no time and loading it into a ‘pod doubly so.
if you dont have time to load your own music onto your own iPod, you dont need an iPod.
if you cant load your own music onto your computer ’cause you dont have the time to do it then you probably dont need to load music onto your computer.
if you cant figure out how to load music onto your computer then you probably need a Mac.
if you’re so technically inept that you cant get your music onto a Mac you dont need a computer of any sort.
(scoffs) pay someone to load music onto you iPod/Mac/computer… lazy bastid…
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three miles to school in the snow even in summer. If you young whipper snappers can’t afford the time to rip your own DVDs just so you can be free to drink your fancy $3 coffees, then bah! Don’t even get me going about about not churrning your own butter.
regarding the legality: in the US, ripping DVDs without copy protection is a legal gray area in the US. Obviously, illegal is the word for copy protected DVDs. Regardless, having not read the fine print on the Nimble website, it will be interesting to see if/when there is a legal fight over this ripping service. One reason this could end up being called fair use in a court is that an exact copy is not being made – the video quality is significantly degraded. The “exact copy” issue is one the reason the music/video industries do not want to allow the same fair use for digital media as for analog.