BUG: iMovie '09, Audio Sync Problem on Export

I am *extremely amazed* that a company like *Apple don't take care* of the problems of *its customers*.

Nothing new from Apple since February 16 in 2009 (my post was on September 1)!

As advised in a previous post, I 'm going to fill the following: http://www.apple.com/feedback/imovie.html

Selim
A furious apple customer

Stunning and frustrating that this bug has not been addressed. After reading all the posts, my only option was to rebuild the project from scratch. While doing so I made sure of two things: 1) I muted all the clips that I was going to use while they were in the Event Library; 2) I made sure to only use the standard speed settings on video clips, suppressing any inclination to adjust a speed to 320% for example. I built the project first by quickly adding all the video clips and tested in by exporting a tiny movie. Then I duplicated the project and added all the extra sound track material. Then one more time with the final editing and tuning. Fortunately it all worked. Otherwise this MacBook Pro might have found itself at the bottom of my pool! Argh! Please Apple, get your act together.

p.s. I was tempted to buy Final Cut but even that was frustrating: a) couldn't buy it and download immediately (learn something from Adobe, guys); and b) there's not quick way in Final Cut to do Ken Burns effects! Why is that?!?!?

I have the same problem too and I think it is poor that apple have not done anything yet. Perhaps it is their way of getting us to buy Final Cut.

As a work around for my project that contained various clips at various speeds that were all in time to a music track I did the following:

- Remove Music track.
- Export project as a QT movie and in the settings turn sound off.
- Start a new project.
- Import the above QT file.
- Add Audio track back in.

That worked for me and now is all as it should be on a DVD burnt from iDVD.

Hi smudo77!

Thanks for your info, I have a similar moviefile (lots of small files with own audio and added songs, almost 50 minutes long, plays perfect in iMovie but is out of sync upon exporting to iDVD or QuickTime) and I'd really like to try your method, since it worked out for you!

I've managed to get the audio out of iMovie with Hijack Pro (I used custom settings of 320 kbps to keep the best sound).

But now my question/problem is:
Could you please give me a step by step (where to click, what to do) to get the iMovie-video exported without sound and subsequently adding this soundless video to iDVD, together with the hijacked audio file to make a new in-sync DVD movie?

PS: I must also add that the hijacked audio file I created is 10 seconds longer than the original video file, but it probably only has no audio at the end of the movie, so I assume this should not create a problem upon export?

Thank you in advance for your help (OR ANYONE ELSES?)!

Kind regards,
Roger

It's nice to finally arrive at the thread addressing my exact situation; imovie09 has an apparant WIDE SPREAD problem w/ the audio sync. My mac only narrowly escaped destruction in a violent and brutal manner over this issue. I was considering throwing it in the street and running over it w/ my car so it would fit in the lawn mower.


I have a 15 min project created for my son's 4th grade CA Mission project. It includes 100+ individual clips, MANY WITH SLIGHT SPEED ADJUSTMENTS. (102-103%). About 10 min into the BURNED/EXPORTED project, the audio sync gets wacky (audio is late, clips are mute, etc). BUT my project has speed adjustments THROUGHOUT - right from the beginning, & the problems don't start until 2/3 of the way thru, so the sync problem can't be tied ONLY to the speed adjustments. I have created 5 other imovie 09 projects, ALL w/ similar speed adjustments, & this is the 1st problem exporting.

And, as this thread title states, the problem is ONLY on export/burn/share. THE PROJECT PLAYS FINE IN iMOVIE09.

I tried many things: exporting via Quicktime, saving the project in High, Medium, throwing away imovie plist files, clearing cache, running no other processes during burning, even buying 4 GB of new RAM for my macbook. Nothing helped.

Then, I found this thread and focused on the ADJUSTED SPEED of my clips. I went back and adjusted the speed of the clips FROM THE POINT OF THE PROBLEM FORWARD back to 100%, leaving the first 8 or 9 minutes alone (which includes many clips adjusted to 102, 105, even one at 800%). Since that part of my movie was fine after burning, I left it alone.

It finally worked. It had taken several HOURS of research and of course $75 in memory to try to fix it, but it's finally perfect. Here's what I think:

There must be a limit to the amount of speed adjustments you can make in an imovie09 project. Either in size or duration. Here's why I think this:

1) Many of us are finding these sync problems (after burning) towards the end of our projects, when we've applied similar speed modifications to the entire project. Why is that?

2) I've made several other imovie09 projects with exactly the same type of changes to the clips (speed, volume, ducking, separating audio, adding different audio from another file, muting, smoothing, etc) and I have not run into this problem - but the one thing that is different is the length and amount of the clips I've adjusted. The project that gave me the problem is the one w/ the most amount of speed changes...and of course the problem didn't come until the last few min of the project.

It's possible that those people who have only applied one speed change and had the problem immediately after that point may have applied the change to a large or long clip, using up the limit in that one clip. I may be wrong here, I'm no expert, but it does seem coincidental that so many of us are finding this problem ONLY TOWARDS THE END OF OUR PROJECTS.

Anyway, my problem is fixed, I left my speed adjustments alone for the first 2/3 of my movie, and the last 1/3 is all at 100%. It burned fine and plays on my tv great. What a huge PAIN this whole thing was though. Had I known, I would've created the movie on my pc using movie maker. The only positive thing apple did for this problem was host this forum for us to figure it out ourselves. So, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to post here!

iMovie just *****. I spent many many hours building up a movie only to discover this bug on export. I've tried detaching all the sounds and still it doesn't work. Plus for some reason when you detach sounds, it kills performance on iMovie. I have a brand new Mac BookPro and any operation in iMovie now takes many seconds (even after reboot with nothing else running).

Meh...

Any suggestion on how to reset all sound speeds to 100% without having to go back through every single clip and check? I have 100's of clips and don't recall which ones have changed.

So did anybody figure out how to fix this problem because im going through the same thing now.

Same issue. Worked for hours of a project... have done everything I can, and nothing works. Detached all the audio and having major performance issues as well on a top of the line machine. Bull**. So ****** right now. Where is the fix APPLE?!?

Gee, well over a year and not a fix. I am upset to say the least. I have a 15 minute movie that I slaved over to be shown at our organizations yearly MAJOR fundraiser for our school. The video is the highlight of the evening for so many. Ironically, I am on the committee trying to push switching over our entire school/church from PCs to Macs. "They really are superb and the headaches you have with PCs will be non-existent with Macs...well, except for imovie exports. What's that? If there is a bug in imovie, what other headaches will you have?"

The fix has been posted hundreds of times if you will do a search.

What do you search for exactly? I hope you don't mean switching the speeds back to pre-sets, because that isn't a "fix" when you have a long movie of .2-5 second clips perfectly timed to music. Can you give more details on how to find the fix you're talking about AppleMan?

Hi Rubber Gimp,
Is there a way to do this without buying Quicktime Pro? I've already invested hours into trying to fix this project, I don't want to have to spend $30 too (I'm just a poor grad student!).

I fixed it two ways...the first was to only use the speed setting that are on the slider such as 50%, 100%, 200%...which was super annoying because I really wanted 125% or 150%. So I exported it and all was fine..no weird sounds but I really had preferred the video sped up so I went back and used my speed settings I had before and when I was done making sure the length was right for all the songs I DELETED ALL SONGS AND AUDIO. I exported the video without any sound. Then I started a new iMovie project and imported my soundless video in as an event...dragged it to the timeline and put the songs over it.

The pre-sets are the only way to fix it in iMovie.
If you really need custom settings, I would suggest Final Cut Pro, but check their Discussion area first, because I have heard this works, but cannot verify it firsthand.