iLife Sound Effects Missing

You should be able to drag them from the Finder to the iMovie media browser.

Matt

I had the same problem and found the answer in another thread - it will work providing you have another Mac with iMovie 6.

I could find the iLife sound effects in HD>Library>Audio>Apple Loops>Apple>iLife Sound Effects, but in iMovie 7 (iLife 08) all the files have a different extension/ file format (.caf, I believe) and iMovie 6 can't read those. I still have iMovie HD 6 installed on my iMac and there (same path) all the files are in .aif format. So I just copied them over to my MBP and put them in the same location. But, of course, this will only work if you have a working iMovie 6 application on another Mac.

I am also interested in seeing what the solution is since I have the same problem. I tried dragging the iLife Sound Effects folder into the browser and got the same results. Based on what was said in the previous post, I will not try reinstalling iMovie.

Are there any other suggestions?

iMovie '08 sound effects are mp3 files.

To use them in iMovie HD6, you'd need to first copy them out of the iMovie '08 application package.

I've also found a bug with how iMovie HD 6 names folders of effects added to the media browser.

Described here:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1553935&#1553935

Matt

I'm having a similar experience, and the trouble isn't with the location of the underlying files.

The first thing I noticed was that the "Get Info..." windows looked different for the folders of sound effects that played in iMovie, and those that didn't. I suspected the problem was related to ownership & permissions, but while X-Ray revealed the unaccessible effects to belong to the System, there didn't seem to be anything in the permissions to hide their access. Even changing ownership & permissions to match the working effect files and folders did not eliminate the appearance difference between the "Get Info..." windows.

I'm at a total loss.

iMovie '08 sound effects are mp3 files.

Actually, I think it's the iMovie '08 files that are ".caf" -- the mp3 files are the ones in HD that are accessible.

When you examine the iMovie '08 package, the Finder indicates the sound effects are mp3s.

From what I can see iMovie reads .aif files and Garageband reads .caf files. If you go to library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple and change the file type in the iLife Sound Effects folder to .aif the sound effects show up in iMovie but not in Garageband. I've only experimented with a couple of files but it seems if you make a copy of the iLife Sound effects folder and then change the file type to .aif and then copy the files back to their original folder you will have duplicate copies of files (one .aif and one .caf) and they will be available in both iMovie and Garageband. If you use Renamer4mac you can "search & replace" .caf with .aif and change all the files in one go. I'm no expert so I would suggest making a backup copy of your iLife sound effects folder so that you use that if something goes wrong.

Regards,

Jim

Solution: Go to /Library/Audio/Apple Loops/Apple/iLife Sound Effects/
Then drag and drop all of the audio files into a new iMovie HD project.
It will convert them.
Then drag and drop them out of iMovie HD into the above folder, or create a new one.
if you created a new one then drag and drop the folder into the media section of iMovie HD onto the folder list. (this will register it with iMovie HD)

You now have aiff format audio files visible to iMovie HD.