How to Get birdJam to Work on a Cell Phone or Other Non-iPod Device

Note: Sorry but we cannot support you in this endeavor, but we would like to know if you get it to work! Please drop us a line if you get your Zune, Zen, Sandisk or other cell phone to work with birdJam.

Note 2: These instructions were sent to us by Delia Guzman (beginningtobird.com), who wanted to get birdJam onto her cell phone. We can't vouch for how well it works, but, in theory at least, these instructions should work on any device capable of playing MP3 files.

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First, follow all the standard birdJam Maker instructions to get all of the Stokes CDs loaded and updated by birdJam Maker in iTunes.

Once you make it there, and if you didn't change the 'Import Using' preference in iTunes, you'll note that the birdJam edited files are in AAC format. You now want to convert your tunes to MP3 format so that you can use them on your device.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Even if your songs are already in MP3 format, you still need to do this 'convert' step because this physically removes the narration as well as the second bird song that is on some tracks. The iPod uses a track 'Start Time' and a track 'Stop Time' to determine when to start & stop a track. However, other MP3 devices do not support this feature so you MUST convert using the convert command described here:

To convert your tunes to MP3, In iTunes, go to Preferences --> Advanced --> Importing tab. Change the "Import using" option from AAC Encoder to MP3 Encoder. Apply those changes and close Preferences window.

In the main iTunes window, highlight all of your birdsong tracks and then select "Convert Selection to MP3" from the Advanced menu.  iTunes will create MP3 files of the edited AAC tracks -- so you'll have TWO versions of each track.

Once the conversion is done, go find the files in the file system. Sort the tracks by File Type, so the MP3 tracks will be all together and easily accessible. (Or you could delete the AAC files; that works too.)

Attach your phone (or other MP player) to your computer and copy the MP3 version of the birdsong tracks to your device's Music folder. I noticed with my phone (Sony-Ericsson W580i) that I could only copy about fifty tracks at a time; otherwise, the copying function just didn't happen.

Once you've loaded all the birdsong tracks onto your phone, you will need to create the Playlists that BirdJam created for you in iTunes. Unfortunately these can't be copied over directly from iTunes. However, you can use the playlists in iTunes as a guide for recreating the playlists on your device.

One more note: On my phone, after copying all the files over, not everything showed up on the phone. That's when I happened to do a File-->Get Info on the phone card, and there was a small little button you could press to "INDEX" the directory. I clicked on that, and about five minutes later, EVERYTHING showed up on the phone in Walkman function!
 
So now I truly have a fake BirdJam -- with everything on it!

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A final note: If you get the songs onto your device but the bird photos do not make it, you may need to use the software that came with your device to load the songs onto your device. Your device-specific software knows how to format the pictures for your device. We also had some luck with Media Monkey (for Windows). - ed.

A finaler note: We have a report that one user was able to get Windows Media Player version 11 to load the songs, with photos, to a Zen player.

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