"Ripping" is the process of copying audio or video information from one medium, such as an audio CD or DVD movie disc, to the hard drive of a computer. The Windows XP operating system has a feature that allows you to easily rip audio tracks (or songs) from a commercial music CD.

When you first insert an audio CD into a PC, a dialogue box usually appears as shown below. One option that should be listed is "Rip music from CD." (You may need to scroll down to find this if many choices are listed in the dialogue box.

Make sure this option is highlighted and click the OK button.

This should launch Windows Media Player (which depending on the version that's installed on your computer may look different than the version displayed here).



You will notice that each track (song) on the CD has a check mark to the left of the name and this indicates that each song will be ripped from the CD automatically. If you only want to rip some of the songs and not all of them, you will need to de-select the check boxes next to the songs you do not want to copy. But you must act fast because the ripping process begins automatically and it doesn't take too long to rip a track.

Once the desired track or tracks are ripped, you will see which tracks have been "Ripped to library" under the column "Rip Status."

Next, you will need to locate the ripped tracks. By default, they should have been saved in the "My Music" folder, which is inside the "My Documents" folder on your computer's hard drive. In this case, if you navigate to that folder, you will see a folder with the name of the artist or the title of the CD from which you ripped the music track.

If you double click to go inside that folder, you should see the tracks that have been ripped, which should have the file extension: .wma - which stands for Windows Media Audio. At this point you can copy the desired file or files to a flash drive, burn them on a data CD, move them out of this folder or copy them to another location, such as the desktop, so that you can more easily find them.

At this point, you may add the song to Photo Story by selecting the image where you want the song to begin playing and then clicking on the Select Music button (on the Add Background Music screen) and navigating to the location where the ripped track is located.

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For the more adventurous, you may want to explore the More Options feature under the Rip menu in Windows Media Player, which will give you more control of the ripping process.

For example, you will notice under the "Rip Music" tab, that you are able to change the location of where the ripped tracks will be saved. You will also have the option to change the audio quality of the ripped tracks, depending on your needs and the amount of hard drive space you want to use to store these files.