Since I heard that 7-11 jingle about 2 years ago, the thing has been stuck in my head. Taking a break from studying for JLPT,  I decided to create a ringtonefor my iPhone. Hopefully in the process, I get to learn more about my Mac.

1. First, the searching for the clip

I thought this would be easy, but I couldn’t look for the exact one. The keywords I used were probably wrong. There’s this video of the nanaco commercial on youtube, but there’s a voice-over and the jingle is “nanaco de iko iko” instead of “nanaco de kao kao“.  The best I could find was someone playing the jingle (as well as the door-opening chime) on the piano.

2. Next, downloading the clip.

Getting the flv/mp4 source is as simple as a single-click with the  DownloadHelper firefox extension. Be sure to click the “HQ18″ one so that it’ll already be in Mp4 format.

3. Separating the audio track

I googled a bit and was surprised this can be done in GarageBand (GarageBand can handle video!?).

1. Created a New Project and dragged the file downloaded in step 2.
2. Then deleted the video track,
3. clipped the sound here and there and
4. exported it to an AAC sound file (.m4a) using the Share->Export Song to Disk….

To be usable as an iPhone rihgtone, the setting for the export should be : AAC Encoder, 128kbps.

Note: The exported song contained about 4 seconds of extra silence. Before deciding to edit it using audacity, I googled a bit and found this from a forum:

Before exporting, click the Loop tool. (2 arrows bent in a broken circle).
Drag the yellow line that appears at the top to length of the track. It should then only export to where the yellow line ends.

That solved the problem.

4. Now the magic: Making an iPhone Ringtone.

There are 3 steps to doing this  :

1. Go to the folder where you exported the song
2. Change the file extension from .m4a to .m4r
3. Chuckle! There is no step 3!

(detailed steps with screenshots for created ringtones from any .mp3 file)

5. Placing it on the iPhone.

In iTunes, choose File->Add To Library and select the .m4r file you created. Sync. (You may have to edit the Sync settings for your Ringtones to include the newly imported one).

That’s it!

(I’m waiting for permission from the YouTube user before I post the ringtone files.)