[G4] iMovie Audio Frustration...

[Chuck Kay]

On Jan 22, 2004, at 8:42 PM, Chuck Kay wrote:

> I am getting quiet annoyed at some iMovie audio editing problems. I am 
> using iMovie 4 but as i recall these same problems occurred in other 
> flavors. It's great to be able to edit audio levels within video clips 
> but here is my problem. I am editing a basic wedding video. Anytime I 
> try to fade in audio at the beginning of a clip, I get this audible 
> distortion when playhead crosses over between the preceding and 
> current clip. It's like a little 'blip' sound artifact. I am pretty 
> sure it is coming from the embedded audio from the video track (the 
> one I'm trying to fade in). Also, when I paste video over an existing 
> clip, the same thing happens. I'm aware the audio is extracted in a 
> paste over but when playing the resulting clip, again, there is a very 
> tiny, fast, ANNOYING little blip between the clips. All I'm wanting to 
> do is paste video over an existing video track w/audio to get my 
> second camera angle. But there's still that little blip there. 
> Arrggh....I've tried every trick I know, any tips, help?? I've got 
> Final Cut Pro, but I don't know it and this project is due in a week.

Ahhh. I'll post a follow-up. Sort of solved the problem but risky. The 
distortion is definitely coming from the video w/embedded audio. No 
matter how I edit the audio level, it is hit or miss whether or not you 
have the small amount of distortion or "blip" as I call it between 
clips, with or w/o transitions. So, this is what I did. I have one 
large video clip (w/embedded audio) that I am going to use. I just went 
ahead and extracted the audio from that clip and made sure it is locked 
to the video track before I did any paste overs. But you have to do one 
more thing. Although, the audio is stripped from the video track, there 
is still the potential for the distortion. Make sure you turn the audio 
off for the video track by deselecting the check box. That does it. You 
can then edit the audio levels of the extracted track with no "blips". 
But of course that can lead to future problems. The major problem could 
be audio syncing problems later on, particularly if it is a large 
project. Also, must use the correct transitions or the audio and video 
lengths will not be the correct length leading to major audio syncing 
problems when adding more video clips w/audio further into the project. 
However, so far so good. iMovie isn't perfect but this is the best I've 
figured out so far. My project will end up about 80 minutes in length.