SOUND ON IMOVIE

hey mr. macfixit
i have an ''older'' OS X 10.2.8 and would sometimes like to combine a series of quicktime mpgs into one imovie to uptake into my video camcorder. The help section has me converting them to dv and this goes swimmingly until i try to hear them. i can see them fine but there is no sound! i can (using firewire) tape them from there onto a video in my ''old'' sony camcorder but still, there is no sound. There is nothing in the help section on this. Nothing in David Pogues imac or mac for idiots books on it either.
russ

since I'm using iMovie 5 controls may be different but are you guys clicking the little box on the side of the "time line viewer" that specifies "Turn this audio track on or off" ?

In iMovie 4 you have a slider for editing volume control at the bottom of the "time line viewer" screen. Are you turning it up to increase volume and checking the little box there ?

Try bringing up this pdf file

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/software/iMovieAtAGlance.pdf

I found it quick and informative... good luck !

grim

yes the little box been ticked,still no sound,As i have mentioned in the first post,the 2nd soundtrack added to the original footage is also not heard in the final product

In Quicktime or AVI files, the audio and video tracks are seperate files, or tracks, held together by the Quicktime or AVI "container".

MPG's only use 1 track that contains both the video and audio. When you save an MPG in Quicktime, it doesn't see an audio track and doesn't know to extract the audio from what it see's as a video track. The audio is lost in the process.
To do what you want, you must first "demux" the file, that is, seperate the audio from the video. You can use an app. called bbDEMUX (freeware) or any one of a dozen other choices for this purpose.

Next, open the created audio track in Quicktime.

Then open the created video track in Quicktime.

Press "command A" to select all of the video track.

Press "command C" to copy the video track to the clipboard.

Click on the audio track window in Quicktime to bring it to the front.

Press "command A" to select all of the audio track.

In the "Edit" pull-down window, select "Add to selection and scale". There is a keyboard equivalent, but I don't have the memory to recall 4 keys at once, so I use the pull-down menu.
This command puts the two tracks back together in a way Quicktime can deal with.
Save the file, edit the file, watch the file. it should all work as expected from this point.

I suggest saving as a stand alone file, so you can throw away the 2 files that bbDEMUX made.

Lampie

Something I did not know (add to the list of things I don't know)

grim

so surely it must go into the list of things is used not to know?



P

I can hear the audio when playing thru the camera or importing the clips so the connections etc seem fine,however cannot hear the sound during the editing process.exporting the clips as QT.mov -the sound is there allright in the assembled finished product.Is it because of the formac that the sound cannot be heard-but that should not be as it seems to be importing alright.Any further thoughts.(YES the formac is connected thru firewire)
thanks
ravi

So the sound is there but you cannot hear it when you drag the clip from the clip library into the timeline, select it and hit the play button.
I do not know of any setting that would prevent the sound from playing, other than those already mentioned in this thread, so I'm a little stumped right now.
I'll do some more research and let you know what I find

P

you are spot onto the problem.look forward to hearing from you.I also spoke to formac wondering if there was a problem with the digitizer and they told me that it is an 'imovie thing' that you cannot hear the sound in the viewer but can hear the sound in the final export.I am not sure if that is true
ravi

By deleting the imovie preferences in the preferences folder(home->library),and restarting imovie I am now able to hear the audio from the original footage.However I am still unable to hear the additional soundtrack from itunes addedd to the audiotrack on the timeline.
R