iMovie Question: YES audio NO video

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iMovie Question: YES audio NO video

Hello:

I'm making a graduation video for my daughter. I am using iMovie on my MacBook Air.

I have a bunch of videos that family and friends have sent to me. A handful of them lose the video once I import them. The audio is there, but no picture.

I see lots of fixes for videos with no sound, but none for sound without video ...

The video format is .mov and there are other .movs in the iMovie, so I don't think it's format. It's only affecting about three (important) clips.

Any ideas on what might be going wrong?

MacBook Air 13", macOS 10.15

Posted on May 13, 2020 5:55 PM

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Answer 1

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

May 13, 2020 6:13 PM in response to jodiemorgetron

Actually, I do think it is a format issue. The .mov format is a bucket that can contain different codecs depending on which device is rendering it.

Try re-encoding the clips to H.264, Mp4/AAC, even if they are already that format. You can do it with the free download Handbrake, that you can get here:

https://handbrake.fr/

To make it simple, open Handbrake and click on File/Open Source. In the window that pops up, navigate to your clip and click on it to choose it as the source. Then do a File/Start Encoding. You should end up with a converted clip that will play in iMovie. If it still doesn't play video you may need to redo the process, entering the codecs that I mentioned.

-- Rich

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Answer 2

May 13, 2020 6:50 PM in response to Rich839

Thank you! This helped with two of the clips. The other one I used a really weird workaround. I uploaded it to Flipgrid and then downloaded it from there and it worked. The only reason I tried the FG method was because MOST of the videos were submitted that way. However, your solution is much much much handier. Thank you so much!

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Answer 3

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

May 13, 2020 7:27 PM in response to jodiemorgetron

You are welcome! :) Glad it worked for you.

-- Rich

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iMovie Question: YES audio NO video

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