Recently, I needed to be able to check if AAC files passed to my application were Protected AACs from the iTunes Music Store or not.

Here’s the C code I used to do this:


extern Boolean FirstSoundTrackIsAProtectedAAC (Movie theMovie)
{

OSStatus osErr;
Track theTrack;
Media theMedia;
Boolean isProtected = false;

// get the first enabled sound track
theTrack = GetMovieIndTrackType(theMovie, 1, AudioMediaCharacteristic, movieTrackCharacteristic | movieTrackEnabledOnly);
if (theTrack != NULL) {

// get the sound track media
theMedia = GetTrackMedia(theTrack);
if (theMedia != NULL) {

SampleDescriptionHandle sourceSoundDescription;

sourceSoundDescription = (SampleDescriptionHandle)NewHandle(0);

// get the description of the sample data
GetMediaSampleDescription(theMedia, 1, sourceSoundDescription);
osErr = GetMoviesError();

// printf(“dataFormat is %.4s\n”, &(*sourceSoundDescription)->dataFormat);

if ((*sourceSoundDescription)->dataFormat == ‘drms’) {
isProtected = true;
}

DisposeHandle((Handle)sourceSoundDescription);

}
}

return isProtected;

}


This specifically checks the first soundtrack of a movie. More generally, you might want to check every track for protected content if you are to export any movie given to you.