THE CURSE OF THE PHANTOM AUDIO!

This is a strange case I defy anyone to solve, or even explain. I tried following the instructions in iMovie 3.03 about "Retaining the audio under pasted video." If you have "Extract Audio in paste over" checked, you're not supposed to have to delete the audio from the clip you paste in, but most times it doesn't work for me. I select the clip I want, extract the audio, Unlock Audio Clip, delete the audio, and THEN "Paste Over at Playhead," or I get double audio.

Something happened this time, however, that COMPLETELY stumped me! I tried to do this with a very brief clip--about two seconds. When the audio was supposedly extracted, I couldn't find the audio clip to delete it. I pasted it in anyway. Sure enough, double audio. I deleted the clip, thinking I'd get rid of both picture and sound.

I gave up on just going to "Restore Clip" in most cases, as sometimes I've done some difficult editing I want to keep. Instead, what I do when I drag a clip from the Clips Pane to the Clips viewer is copy and paste before I change ANYTHING, then drag the copy BACK into the Clips Pane, which should result in an EXACT copy of the original without having to reimport from the camera no matter what gets screwed up.

So I took a DIFFERENT COPY of the ENTIRE SEQUENCE and tried extracting the audio from the WHOLE THING. What happened was the usual "silent movie" effect--EXCEPT FOR THE TWO SECONDS I ORIGINALLY TRIED TO COPY! THE AUDIO WAS STILL THERE--SEEMINGLY UNREMOVABLE!

To test the possibility of some special curse on those particular two seconds, I imported just that part again from the camera and removed the audio by the usual method. This time it worked. I went to "Restore Clip" to remove any changes on the clip I was pasting into, then edited it back to where it was. BEFORE CHANGING ANYTHING, when I checked it, the phantom audio was STILL THERE! ALTHOUGH I HAD RESTORED THE CLIP--AND THE PICTURE, INCLUDING PARTS I HAD DELETED, CAME BACK!!!!!!!

WHY WAS THE SOUND I HAD ACCIDENTALLY PASTED IN THE ORIGINAL VERSION STILL THERE IN THE RESTORED VERSION??? WHY, WHY, WHY???????

Now I am going to delete everything and start all over with the copy in the clips pane. If these two seconds of "phantom audio" are STILL lurking in the Timeline, I GIVE UP! I don't know how this happened or how to fix it!

Power Mac G4, Mac OS X (10.4.4), Hard Drive 57.26 GB, Internal Slave Drive 232.86 GB

Posted on Mar 22, 2006 9:45 PM

21 replies

Apr 1, 2006 7:28 PM in response to Jkevin Lambert

I suppose the reason my movie retains all its sound in iMovie is the way it was imported. I run footage from a Sony camcorder which shoots 8 mm tape through a Canopus ADVC 110 which converts from Analog to Digital, and back if you want, but I have had no cause to convert back.

When I click Import, the whole clip, picture and sound, is imported into the Clips place at the top right in iMovie. There is also a way to import JUST the audio, which I also tried and it worked FINE.

To get the sound out, "Paste Over at Playhead" worked fine on some sequences. The original sound was retained and the other sound must have been muted and was never a problem, even when I took the Quicktime movie to Toast to make the disc.

After awhile this quit working. The reason for extracting and deleting the sound was, the movie was one continuous series of clips and I had sound in the second line of a lot of the clips which I DID want--for instance, music (down below) that was coordinated to a different picture (up above). Extracting and deleting worked FINE until I was ready to do this last sequence--THEN, NOTHING WORKED! Since all the clips were from one song, I was able to run them together by just shaving a bit at a time off the end of each clip so that the song ran, I would say seamlessly, all the way through, but you can see how that was a LOT of work vs. just pasting in pictures, and wouldn't have worked the other times, with clips from different parts of the same song or different songs entirely (if the sound was retained--which I couldn't at that time prevent.)

I think the same phenomenon may have occurred one other time. I put a whole series of clips in over a section of music by "paste over at playhead." They all worked perfectly with the possible exception of one, where the original sound might be retained, but it is just a voice, and the music I was pasting over had such a babble of voices it isn't really noticable. I could play the original video to see if that voice shows up in the original music, but after about 1,000 times of listening to that music I have other things I'd really rather do. It is a mystery why the sound would be retained in that ONE clip when the whole other sequence went right, and, if it is there, it is there in the same way as the later, really troublesome sound--NOT visible on the timeline--NO way to extract, delete, or, as far as I know, mute it either. (Maybe there would have been a way to isolate just the one clip and turn down the volume in it--but if it wouldn't let me extract or delete it--why would it let me turn it down? I was afraid it would do nothing, or turn down the sound I DID want, so ended up just leaving it.)

No one has been able to explain this. It has me mystified and probably everyone else as well.

moonunit

Level 3

945 points

Apr 4, 2006 2:03 PM in response to Cornelia Shields

No one has been able to explain this. It has me
mystified and probably everyone else as well.

I can explain it. A national newspaper in Britain said of iMovie 3 "spread the word that, in its current state, this piece of software simply is not worth the CD-Rom it has been burnt on."

They called it pre-beta software full of show-stopping bugs. However, before you upgrade, I'm finding most of the same bugs in iMovie 6 HD - the current version.

This article was written about version 3, but it may as well have been written about iMovie 6 HD.
http://technology.guardian.co.uk/online/comment/story/0,12449,901868,00.html

Mar 23, 2006 3:53 PM in response to Cornelia Shields

This time I extracted audio from BOTH clips, and THREW THE AUDIO AWAY from the clip that was meant to remain silent--WHICH WORKED LAST TIME. THE DOUBLE AUDIO IS STILL THERE! WHAT IS WRONG!?!

Mar 23, 2006 7:03 PM in response to Cornelia Shields

Well, unchecking the second audio box down below in the timeline solved the overlapping audio problem. I just hope it STAYS FIXED and that nothing comes back to haunt me!

Mar 24, 2006 12:24 AM in response to Cornelia Shields

Just because I keep responding to my own posts doesn't mean no one else can reply.

Nov 24, 2009 9:34 PM in response to Cornelia Shields

Another inexplicable, unanswerable question.

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THE CURSE OF THE PHANTOM AUDIO!