No Audio Fade in Transitions

Question

No Audio Fade in Transitions

Whenever I use a transition, the audio signal of the first clip is more or less switched off instead of being faded out through the duration of the transition. The fade-in of the second clip works as expected. Setting different fade-in/out times in the clip's audio settings does not help - it will fade out smoothly then, but will do so before the transition even starts. To me, this seems obviously buggy behaviour. You can work around it by using audio offset in the precision editor, but this is truly anoying hassle when all you want to do is a plain ordinary crossfade. Anybody else out there with a similar experience?

All the best - Niko

iBook G4 / 12" & iMac 17" Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Feb 17, 2009 12:45 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 17, 2009 3:44 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

Open the inspector and use the Audio tab. You can set fades to be automatic or manual. For fade in, and fade out, they can each be from 1 frame to 2 seconds (60 frames).
Fades are not tied to transitions at all. Fades are tied to audio tracks.

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Answer 2

Feb 17, 2009 6:08 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Hi, AppleMan & thanks for your quick reply.

I fear what you suggest will not work. Setting a fade-out time manually will perform a fade, but it will be finished, i.e. fully faded out, before the actual transition even starts.

The normal audio behaviour for a crossfade (and most other transitions) is to fade the first clip out, and, at the same time, fade the second audio in, without requiring further modifications. This was the case in all previous versions of iMovie, and sometimes it does work like that when I open an older project in iMovie 09.

The very moment I change anything in such a project, the transition behaviour changes the way I've explained, and there is no turning back. Upon examination, the precision editor still shows the correct transition, with all fades where they should be, but iMovie sadly fails to perform it that way. That's what I meant with buggy behaviour.

All the best - Niko

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Answer 3

bit-part

Level 1

8 points

Feb 17, 2009 6:30 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

I've been experiencing some 'buggy' audio behaviour too, mostly with some audio adjustments not actually sticking. Normally when I close iMovie down and re-open, repeating the adjustments seems to work. That said, it's been a week or so since I've had these particular issues. I made a new copy of my project and have been working off that recently, so maybe that helped?

I have not had problems fading in transitions, although my transitions are pretty short on the whole and I have not really been trying to time my fade with the transition. But given some of the audio bugs I've experienced I'm not surprised to hear your issues.

I also posted this earlier about how to build longer audio fades. I built one last night that is about 8 seconds long with a series of 2 second muted sound clips that ducking the music to 80%, 60%, 40% and then a manual 2 second fade. Pretty quick and easy once you get the hang of it, albeit a clumsy solution. If you want to keep the video sound at 100% you will have to do it splitting the video into 2 second segments and duck the music from the video audio adjustment.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8930465&#8930465

bit-part

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Answer 4

Feb 17, 2009 7:26 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

Hi, Nikolaus, This won't help you at all, but I want you to know, I'm having the exact same problem. In the precision editor, I can stretch the transition, I can stretch the audio fade down of the first clip, I can stretch the audio fade up in the second clip, all independantly for a very long time but the audio fades are always immediate, - something like .5 second. The video transition behaves accurately. The visual display in the precision editor looks great, but audio-wise, its not doing, what it's showing it should do.

Good luck to us - Matt
iMovie '09 8.0

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Answer 5

Feb 17, 2009 7:39 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

You can drag the end point of the sound clip through the transition and anchor it at the beginning of the next clip. This should achieve the effect you are seeking.

Also, unlike iMovie 6, you can have up to 99 audio tracks in iMovie 08, 09

Message was edited by: AppleMan1958

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Answer 6

Feb 17, 2009 7:58 AM in response to soundburg

Hi Matt - yes, good luck to us indeed & thanks for your commiseration. Tonight, I'll try some systematic testing - re-import material, create new projects, rewrite thumbnails and such. Or maybe I won't and simply sit back and wait for Apple to fix it. They usually do, after some time.

Best, Niko

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Answer 7

Feb 17, 2009 8:35 AM in response to soundburg

This seems so simple to me. Maybe because I am doing it outside the Precision Editor.

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Answer 8

Feb 17, 2009 8:41 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Ah - there's an idea. I'll include that in my test scenario. Thanks - Niko

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Answer 9

Feb 17, 2009 8:49 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

See this [Video Tutorial on Sound|http://www.apple.com/findouthow/movies/ilife08.html#tutorial=audioclips]. It is from iMovie 08, but the concepts still apply. iMovie 09 just gives you a couple of more tools, such as the audio waveforms and the Precision editor..

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Answer 10

Feb 18, 2009 5:10 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

I've done some semi-systematic testing, and it seems to me the precision editor might be the culprit. When applying new transitions to newly imported material in a newly created project, things tend to work fine, but at some stage in the course of adjusting things in the p. ed., the behaviour suddenly and irrevocably goes all strange. So, as far as I'm concerned, I'll wait for an Apple fix. Come on, guys, I know you can do it.

AppleMan: Yes, you can do this outside the p.e., but it involves detaching the audio and adjusting it without losing sync for every single clip concerned, which is unnecessarily fiddly, particularly when you consider what an elegant solution the p.ed. at least promises to be.

Thanks for all of your thoughts and effort,

best wishes - Niko

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Answer 11

Feb 18, 2009 10:06 AM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

I have the same behaviour here, when you drag the transition point to be at another place, sound of the first clip goes silent immediatly instead of fade out.

No way to get it back indeed 😟 Where do we file bug reports on this?

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Answer 12

Feb 18, 2009 10:22 AM in response to Thierry Coopman

For feedback (like bug reports) on iMovie go to this site:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/imovie.html

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Answer 13

Feb 18, 2009 1:32 PM in response to Valenciano

Thierry, Valenciano - thanks for confirming behaviour & providing the feedback link. I'll be going there right now.

Best - Niko

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Answer 14

Mar 7, 2009 2:17 PM in response to Nikolaus Buettner

Has anyone elver found a way around this or are we just waiting for an iMovie update?
The outgoing clip cuts out then the incoming clip fades in - drives me CRAZY. I don't want to export any movies until this is fixed.

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Answer 15

Mar 29, 2009 6:05 PM in response to Michele Gardner

This problem was not fixed in this update by the way.

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