iMovie '11 audio either doesn't sync with a clip or doesn't play at all.

Cliff,

Is it only out of sync when you export it? What happens if you play the project in iMovie from beginning to end, is it out of sync there as well?

imoviebill wrote:
Cliff,

Is it only out of sync when you export it? What happens if you play the project in iMovie from beginning to end, is it out of sync there as well?

Hi, all is fine when I play the project in iMovie. The sync problem is visible only in the exported movie file (s).

Hmmm strange, usually those two go hand in hand. A few more questions:

1. How long is the project, and how many clips are there?
2. Do you have stills, transitions etc?
3. When you say the exported movie is out of sync, by how much, a few frames or several seconds?
4. IS the movie out of sync at the very beginning of the file, or does it drift out of sync over time

I hope I can help you out, this sounds strange.

imoviebill wrote:
Hmmm strange, usually those two go hand in hand. A few more questions:

1. How long is the project, and how many clips are there?
2. Do you have stills, transitions etc?
3. When you say the exported movie is out of sync, by how much, a few frames or several seconds?
4. IS the movie out of sync at the very beginning of the file, or does it drift out of sync over time

I hope I can help you out, this sounds strange.

Thanks. I would certainly appreciate any ideas you could share.

To answer your questions:

1. The project is about 1 hour and 20 minutes, and has 274 clips

2. It contains transitions between nearly all the clips, and there are many photos that were added from iPhoto. Plus the project also contains 4 map animations. To the stills slideshow at the end of the project, I've added a piece of music track (dragged to the project from Finder)

3/4. The sync problems begins about five minutes into the exported video (unfortunately I've deleted all the previous faulty output, and hence cannot say whether the sync problem starts at a specific time). In the beginning the audio is off only by a fraction of a second, but grows and grows. It disappears from time to time and there's completely no audio after about half of the video. However, audio added to the slide-show part of the video is in sync!

Hey there, I looked up that camera and it looks like it creates h.264 files. I would suggest this if you can:

Go to the Event where all of your clips are, select all and right click. Choose "Optimize-->FUll"

NOTE: Be SURE you plenty of hard drive space. This will make fresh, icodec versions of all of you clips. Your originals will still be saved (don't worry), and your project should not be effected (although I would make at least 1 tiny change to the project so it refreshes before you try to export it again.

This may take a while, so plan accordingly. It may help though, h.264 is not the best editing format.

imoviebill wrote:
Hey there, I looked up that camera and it looks like it creates h.264 files. I would suggest this if you can:

Go to the Event where all of your clips are, select all and right click. Choose "Optimize-->FUll"

NOTE: Be SURE you plenty of hard drive space. This will make fresh, icodec versions of all of you clips. Your originals will still be saved (don't worry), and your project should not be effected (although I would make at least 1 tiny change to the project so it refreshes before you try to export it again.

This may take a while, so plan accordingly. It may help though, h.264 is not the best editing format.

Many thanks for the tip. I'll give it a go over the next few days. Will report back.

Thanks also for the info about H.264, but I am curious as to how I have been able to produce many successful home movies with iMovie '09 using the very same camera...

I had this problem. After hours of trial and error, I discovered that using the noise reduction on clips in the project caused my audio sync problems. I removed the noise reduction and the sync was restored. No point having a feature if it does not work. Don't know how I will get rid of the nasty background but will be moving to FCE soon.

iMovie 11 is a Huge Disappointment. The video I uploaded doesn't sync with the audio. It does in the beginning of the clip, but about 5 mins in it's off. I check the clip with Quicktime and it's fine. I also had no issues with this in the previous version of iMovie. I hope they fix this soon. At least acknowledge the problem, Apple!

imoviebill wrote:
Hey there, I looked up that camera and it looks like it creates h.264 files. I would suggest this if you can:

Go to the Event where all of your clips are, select all and right click. Choose "Optimize-->FUll"

NOTE: Be SURE you plenty of hard drive space. This will make fresh, icodec versions of all of you clips. Your originals will still be saved (don't worry), and your project should not be effected (although I would make at least 1 tiny change to the project so it refreshes before you try to export it again.

This may take a while, so plan accordingly. It may help though, h.264 is not the best editing format.

pjsquared wrote:
I had this problem. After hours of trial and error, I discovered that using the noise reduction on clips in the project caused my audio sync problems. I removed the noise reduction and the sync was restored. No point having a feature if it does not work. Don't know how I will get rid of the nasty background but will be moving to FCE soon.

Thanks both. I did the "Optimize-->Full" as imoviebill suggested, and I removed the noise reduction (as suggested by pjsquared) which I had previously set to the audio that I had added to the slide show.

The share to iDVD came out great. No sync problem at all!

Thank you all. You've been so helpful.

My video audio plays fine, but when I try to add iTunes music . . . nothing (even what was recently downloaded from iTunes). It will play in the trimmer fine but no sound when I play the project or the clip. Yes the volume is on and up and not muted in the clip. Apple, please fix this asap. I've never had problems with imovie in the 4 or 5 years I've used it until now.

Anybody found a solution to this problem? I thought I was doing something wrong. I just got the iMovie 11 and terrible issues with DV Files exporting to iDVD. Everything plays just fine in iMovie. The only thing I did was deleted a few scenes from the imported clips - not sure if that creates any issues exporting movie. I wasted all weekend to track down what I did wrong. I should have looked here, I guess I give way too much credit to Apple software/hardware.

Please help!!!!!!!
Thanks

Avatar007 wrote:
Anybody found a solution to this problem? I thought I was doing something wrong. I just got the iMovie 11 and terrible issues with DV Files exporting to iDVD. Everything plays just fine in iMovie. The only thing I did was deleted a few scenes from the imported clips - not sure if that creates any issues exporting movie. I wasted all weekend to track down what I did wrong. I should have looked here, I guess I give way too much credit to Apple software/hardware.

Please help!!!!!!!
Thanks

As you can see from my last post (one post above yours) the fix suggested by imoviebill and pjsquared fixed the problem. I followed both advices before sharing with iDVD, and so can't say which one of the two advices actually fixed the issues.

Hi i also found a ''fix'' to this issue. Try converting each clip and detach the audio. Sometimes what happens is that some clips are shot in different speeds. Also Detaching audio may help the mac to follow the audio easier (i got no explanatio thats the best i can come up with). Converting video is as sim^ple as double clicking the movie clip and clicking convert file (usually used to change speed settings. Also make sure that there is no`''double Audio'', (a clip has two audio files attached to the clip (i musted one). It gets the mac mixed up 😝. Select unwanted audio after dettaching them and delete them. Hope i helped.

Hello all,

I'll bet it has something to do with certain types of audio tracks embedded in the video clips. Try optimizing your clips, and see if that fixes the issue. Do this:

Go to the Event where all of your clips are, select all and right click. Choose "Optimize-->FUll"

NOTE: Be SURE you plenty of hard drive space. This will make fresh, icodec versions of all of you clips. Your originals will still be saved (don't worry), and your project should not be effected (although I would make at least 1 tiny change to the project so it refreshes before you try to export it again.

This may take a while, so plan accordingly. This may fix it as I have yet to see any reports of iCodec clips going out of sync.

I wish to update my early post here. I struggled early with the issue of failure to be able to export a video with properly synced audio after the upgrade to iMovie '11. The phenomena is as described above: audio begins to lag incrementally, and they may drop out suddenly at the end. I described my problem with the Flip Mino HD second generation. I had no problem before with iMovie '09. I have no problem with the video from a Canon tape camera, nor Canon SD1400. The HiDef 24 fps Cinema video form my Canon S95 also works fine with iMovie '11. Old Events no longer work any more.

I tried everything above and more without success. Detaching the audio from the video in the Events seems to work, but gives problems with other audio edits and transitions and does not permit use of the new audio editing functions in iMovie '11. I also found success if I "reformatted" the Flip Video Clips to .mp4 (that's what Flip videos are supposed to be anyway) with a program like Permute or Flip Video Converter before importing into iMovie. However much bitrate was lost and the quality of the image was degraded and jerky. Additionally, reformatting lost all of the original date and time information. It also more than doubled the workflow time. This was not satisfactory. Noise reduction settings were not a factor for me.

To rule out that the patch to iMovie 9.0.1 might have fixed things, I retook 10 minutes of new Flip video on about 10 clips. I captured the video as I usually did "optimizing" during the import process. I made a project without any transitions or other effects or additions. I exported to Media Browser as "large" as if I were making a DVD. The audio fell out of sync. I also re-imported the clips without "Optimization" but the problem persisted. This optimization on import is to my understanding a way to save disk space, but it increased the size of the Event files from 829 MB to 2.54 GB! Clearly the recent fix did not address the sync problem.

After reading the above, I selected all the clips in the new Event browser, right clicked, and "optimized,"– (re-optimized actually as I had already "optimized during the import).. I did this before editing. To my amazement, the exported movie played correctly whether I had optimized during import or not. I will try to gain more experience with this.

I have no idea what is going on. Something got broke during the upgrade to iMovie '11. I am in hopes that this "work-around" will carry me for a while, but we deserve better. After all, Apple still posts on its camera support webpage that the Flip Mino HD is a supported camera for iMovie '11.

Please share your experiences on this and other blogs. Please also let Apple support know by calling them, and sending useful information to them at:
http://apple.com/feedback/imovie.html .

Don't just rail at them, give them your specifics. If you are having this problem with other kinds of cameras, let them know. Since they endorse the Flip camera and sell it on their website, I assume they will rise to the occasion to avoid false advertising claims against them. I do confess that I have been disappointed so far with both Apple and Flip as neither acknowledges there is a problem. I no longer believe that it is just me and my computer.