No sound in imported video clips, though fine in QuickTime

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No sound in imported video clips, though fine in QuickTime

Hi, I've created a new iMovie project that includes several pics and videos taken with a Sony Cybershot DSC-P93. I import everything into iPhoto and the video plays back fine with no problems with the sound present in QuickTime.

QuickTime states that the format is MPEG1 Muxed, and the file extension is .MPG.

However, when I import these video clips into iMovie, the sound disappears. I've tried converting the files to .MOVs using QuickTime Pro, but although these also playback with sound in QuickTime, the sound disappears in iMovie.

Do I need to split the clips up into audio and video streams and then combine these in iMovie? Is there a special codec I need for iMovie that QuickTime already has?

Any help is appreciated, I'm completely lost here 🙂

MacBook Pro Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Jun 25, 2006 8:49 AM

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Answer 1

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mishmumken

Level 5

4,000 points

Jun 25, 2006 9:00 AM in response to paulof

Hello Paulof

Any help is appreciated, I'm completely lost here

Well you don't seem so lost, as you have given most of the answer yourself 🙂

iMovie doesn't work with muxed MPEG, so you'll have to convert it. you can find more info on Dan Slagle's Unofficial iMovie FAQ

1. Can't hear audio in iMovie when I import an MPEG clip
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6030.shtml
2. Mpeg clips from digital cameras
http://danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6018.shtml

MPEG Streamclip is a good tool for conversion, but there's also others. Matti Haveri is the expert for MPEG Streamclip:

How can I edit MPEG or convert DVD or MPEG to DV?
http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/%7Eshmhav/SVCDon_a_Macintosh.html#edit_convertMPEG

Tools:

MPEG StreamClip:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/video/mpegstreamclip.html
Apple MPEG2 PlayBack:
http://www.apple.com/quicktime/mpeg2/

hope this helps

mish

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Answer 2

paulof Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2006 9:33 AM in response to mishmumken

Thanks mishmumken, MPEG Streamclip did the trick.

I tried converting the MPG to a DV Stream using QuickTimePro, but even though I'd selected 44.1 kHz audio the resulting file had no audio track. Doing this in MPEG Streamclip did the trick and iMovie now plays the sound back. Thanks for the tip!

On a related side note, iMovie is so sloooow when it comes to importing these DV clips. 2 minutes of video took about 2minutes to convert to DV and then nearly 11 minutes to import on this 2.1GHz MacBook Pro with 2GB of RAM... thats just crazy. Think I'll stick to editing these clips with Vegas on my Windows machine for now.

Thanks again 🙂

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Answer 3

mishmumken

Level 5

4,000 points

Jun 25, 2006 9:43 AM in response to paulof

Hello Paulof,

a little trick for importing faster:

1. find your project in the movie folder, ctrl-click it and choose "show package contents"
2. find the media folder and copy all your clips into that. close all windows.
3. launch iMovie. a message will tell you that iM found some stray clips and would you like to see the trash. confirm this and iM opens the trash from wher you can simply drag your clips to the clips pane ... voilà

on the other hand: do the clips match your project's setting? 11 min for such a short clip seems very long. Check if both your project and your clip are set to PAL (long importing times occur when trying to import a PAL clip into an NTSC project or vice versa

hope this helps

mish

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Answer 4

paulof Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 25, 2006 10:05 AM in response to mishmumken

Awesome 🙂 My project was an MPEG-4 project since the clip resolution was at 640x480, which is less than DV so I figured Id try that out.

I created a new DV project (and changed the setting to PAL since I'm in Europe and my cam is set to PAL). Imported the clip again, and it took under a minute. Thanks (yet again) for the tip!

Guess I'll be sticking to OSX now, just got to get some Automator actions together to do this for me 🙂

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Answer 5

mishmumken

Level 5

4,000 points

Jun 25, 2006 1:58 PM in response to paulof

Guess I'll be sticking to OSX now

Good to hear 🙂

video can be tricky business....

mish

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