No sound on audio file

Question

Level 1

6 points

No sound on audio file

I am trying to bring in a .mp3 audio recording that I made but it will not play sound even though it is showing the waveforms. I can bring in other .mp3 music into the same movie and timeline and hear sound just fine. I've restarted iMovie and my Mac and it made no difference. I've tried importing the .mp3 file into the movie and I tried bringing it in from iTunes within iMovie and no sound either way when I bring it into the timeline. If I go to iTunes within iMovie to preview it, there is sound in the preview section but as soon as I drop it into the timeline, the audio disappears. Any ideas?

iMovie 10, OS X Yosemite (10.10.1), .mp3 file

Posted on Feb 10, 2015 7:09 PM

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Answer 1

GeeD

Level 6

9,173 points

Feb 11, 2015 4:43 AM in response to mmlosey

Could it be a file bought from iTunes store a long time ago when they were all protected by DRM?

Geoff.

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Answer 2

mmlosey Author

Level 1

6 points

Feb 11, 2015 2:44 PM in response to GeeD

No. I just recorded it. It a voice recording of a phone call that I recorded on my iPhone using the TapeACall app. It creates a .mp3 file that I can either send via email or send to Dropbox. I tried pulling into iMovie the files obtained both ways (email & Dropbox) and that made no difference.

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Answer 3

mmlosey Author

Level 1

6 points

Mar 3, 2015 9:30 PM in response to mmlosey

I found a solution to my problem in case anyone stumbles upon this and finds themselves with the same issue. When I have the audio file selected in iTunes, there is an option available when I right click on the song to "Create AAC version". This creates a duplicate of my audio file in an .m4a format instead of .mp3 format. When I pull this new .m4a file into iMovie from iTunes, I had no issues hearing the sound or cutting or manipulating the file.

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Answer 4

Mar 5, 2015 8:21 PM in response to mmlosey

I'm having the same problem. The .m4a workaround works for me also but iMovie used to be able to use mp3 files. I can still import an mp3 but the audio will disappear after just a few seconds. I'm not sure what happened such that mp3s don't work correctly in iMovie any more.

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