Audio Blips in transitions, Part VIII ... continuing

Driving me crazy, practically ALL of my transitions have the sound click or blip at the beginning and end of a transition. I've got music on the second track- so all I want is silence - everying set to zero, nevertheless... So, I've deleted the transition, extracted the audio from both sides, added a new transition (between two clips with zero audio... and Viola'!! Sound blips are there again. (and I tried deleting the audio clips... this combo is not working. Here's the apple advice:

(new input WELCOME...thanks)

You hear a pop or gap during a title or transition in iMovie
After applying a title or transition, you may sometimes hear a pop or brief period of silence between the transition and the next clip.

This can happen when using iMovie versions 3, 4, and 5.

If you experience this, try extracting the audio from your video clip to a separate track before applying the title or transition. Follow these steps:
Select the affected clip.
To undo the title or transition you have added: From the Edit menu select Undo, or from the Advanced menu select Restore Clip.
Select the video clip in the timeline.
From the Advanced menu, select Extract audio. The audio for the selected clip will be moved to its own audio track in the timeline.
Add your transition or effect.

This document will be updated as more information becomes available.

Posted on Sep 10, 2005 5:49 PM

27 replies

Oct 24, 2005 6:31 AM in response to Ramiro Portillo

I agree. I made some fun and irreplacable family movies 4-5 years ago on IM2. I just moved them onto my OSX powerbook, the files now open up fine in IM5, but the audio blips at the transitions are a huge blot on the viewing experience. The movies have multiple short clips and multiple transitions, it would take a huge amount of work to do any of the workarounds desctibed in this thread.

This has to be an easy thing for Apple to fix, it's obviously just a little code glitch. Aren't there any Apple engineers with their own legacy iMovie files that are being "blipped" to death? This is an easy and important fix.

M./

Oct 25, 2005 12:34 AM in response to mark heath1

A few things that I tried that sometimes helped reduce or eliminate the blip:

1) Adjust the volume of a clip to zero BEFORE adding the transition. Sometimes there is a tiny volume line just kind of under the transition and you cannot remove it after putting in the transiton. After placing the transition, you can then raise the clip's volume to whatever you wish.

2) Slide the zoom slider in timeline view to make the transitions appear as large as possible. Select to show the volume level. Drag the volume up high and then down to zero. For unknown reasons I just happened to discover that this works to remove or decrease the blip....sometimes 🙂

3) Select the clip before, transition, clip after and manually drag the playhead across the edges of the clips from one through the transtion to the other.
Then, try to play the clips and see if the noise is less.

If I think of any other things I've done to help I will post back, but these helped me.

Nov 24, 2005 4:31 PM in response to Miguel Peralta

This tip (apply letterbox effect) fixed most of the audio glitches for me — but not all of them. Particularly, it did not fix cross-dissolve transitions between a Ken Burns-ified photo and a video clip. This was most problematic when the photo came before the video clip. This fix even occasionally introduced new noise into the video clip of the photo that iMovie created. Bummer.

Exporting the entire complete project as an uncompressed DV file actually did just as well or slightly better. In a 20 minute iMovie with LOTS of transitions and cuts about 2 or 3 instances of these audio glitches remained (down from 10-15).

Exporting the entire project to iDVD seems to have done at least as well as exporting it to a DV file, and maybe slightly better. The upshot is, however, this bug ***** and needs to be fixed pronto.

Nov 27, 2005 9:52 PM in response to Ian S.

I must be an idiot...I can't seem to get this "work around" to work right. I just have a black frame of time in my movie. What am I doing wrong?

Nov 28, 2005 10:35 PM in response to Lee Levin

Uncheck 'over black' and try it again!

Nov 29, 2005 6:19 AM in response to Beverly Maneatis

Uncheck 'over black' and try it again!

I got the "blank" subtitle to work by unchecking "over black" but it didn't take away the blip during the transition. Or it moved the blip to the end of the subtitle transition.

ASW

Level 1

0 points

Nov 29, 2005 1:52 PM in response to Bill Catambay

I am having a frustrating time with a DVD project involving a series of stills that forms a kind of video exhibition of my photographs of an Indian village, using fades, overlaps, and the Ken Burns effect. I use the bottom audio bar for ambient sound, and the upper bar for individual sounds (birds, cows, dogs, etc.) The visuals work fine, and so did the sound effects I have been adding from a sound effect CD downloaded into iTunes, but only up to about a third of the way through a 45 minute project, whereupon the sound begins to break up, "ghost" sounds appear in blank spots after I've moved an audio clip, clicks turn up at the end of transitions, and now the entire soundtrack is full of not static so much as a multitude of little breaks. The sound waves when I view them are also broken up. Is this a memory problem? A bug in iMovieHD? In OSX? Can anyone tell me what the problem may be? Should I revert to iMovie 4?

Level 1

5 points

Dec 21, 2005 6:22 PM in response to Jana Krenova

Hi everyone,
I have those stinking sound blips you all are talking about. Found this problem just a few days ago (late December). Does anyone have a new fix or are we still adding invisible effects?
lou

nickmacv

Level 1

85 points

Dec 28, 2005 9:22 PM in response to Dan Knofler

Does anyone have any suggestions for transitions that DON'T introduce this audio glitch? I have all of the GeeThree packages, and like their fade in/out black - but of course it introduces the audio glitch. I'm willing to use something else, if need be. My movies are typically a blend of short clips and still photos, and usually have dozens of transitions. Any suggestions?

rooman

Level 1

0 points

Dec 30, 2005 12:05 AM in response to Dan Knofler

I have the same problem too. I can't belive that apple will not square themselves away with this. I am going into the store tommorow to raise heck about this. To have to install the operating system after I spent all this money is B......T. I have lost all respect for apple at this point. They could fix this. But are too g.....n lazy.

Dec 31, 2005 5:23 AM in response to rooman

I just did a complete erase/install/upgrade to Tiger and put my new copy of iLife05 on, but the audio problems are in my video, too. It seems to be isolated to the transition between a still clip to video and vice versa. If I am transitioning between video clips or still clips, there are no sound blips. If I remove the transition, the sound blips to away. As soon as I put them back even after chopping the clips down to smaller and smaller segments, the sound blips come back.

Very frustrating. I am going to try Ian S. suggestion.

Jan 12, 2006 5:28 AM in response to bonnie m.

hi,

I've been following this topic for a while now with fingers crossed.

Has anyone tried out imovie hd 6?

Supposedly they have done a lot of work on the sound in this version.

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Audio Blips in transitions, Part VIII ... continuing