Imovie Audio Cuts out on one Mac but not on others

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Level 1

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Imovie Audio Cuts out on one Mac but not on others

I copied my 25 min long iMovie from my 2018 Mac mini to my 2011 Mac mini over a wired Ethernet connection. Playing the movie from my old Mini via a TV hooked up through an AV receiver the audio drops out for several minutes in the middle of the movie. I figured file got corrupted when transferred. To test that out I copied the same iMovie file (mp4) to the newer Mini and the file plays fine. Each time I play it on the old mini the audio drops out at the same place.

Mac mini, macOS 10.13

Posted on Oct 3, 2021 2:39 PM

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Answer 1

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Rich839

Level 8

48,168 points

Oct 3, 2021 3:54 PM in response to rdavidschm

I don't know what is causing the sound drop out. Since iMovie created a movie that played fine on your 2018 Mac it isn't an iMovie issue. It looks more like a delivery system issue with your 2011 Mac and interface with the TV hook up.

If you have the device capability, try playing your video on the Mac mini's screen or other interface instead of the one you are using. Does it play on QuickTimePlayer on your 2011 Mac mini?

Another thing that you can try is re-encoding the video clip to H.264, Mp4/AAC with the free download Handbrake. Do that even if the codec already is indicated to be Mp4/AAC. Re-rendering

often cures the issue.

You can get Handbrake here:

https://handbrake.fr/

A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source. Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen. Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to complete. Then save and see if the resulting video will play without audio dropout.

-- Rich

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Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

48,168 points

Oct 4, 2021 11:12 AM in response to rdavidschm

Great! Glad it worked for you.

-- Rich

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Answer 3

rdavidschm Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 4, 2021 11:03 AM in response to Rich839

Thanks! That solved it. I used Handbrake found these options to be close to what you advised: I selected H.264 MKV 1080p 30 (modified) and MP4. What had been a 3.66 GB file came out as 659 MB with no perceptible loss of quality in sound or video. I guess the large file was getting buffered too much with the old Mini and it was stored on a USB external drive on that mini. I tried it first stored on the Mini internal drive and it worked then I transferred it to the external USB drive on the Mini and it plays fine. I have to go back use that approach to reduce the file size of all my large movies that suffer this problem

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Imovie Audio Cuts out on one Mac but not on others

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