Audio for imported videos spike alot

Hi, Josh,

Do a Control click/Get Info on the clip's icon and check what audio codec it has. iMovie likes AAC, aiff, wav, Mp3. If it's not one of those that might explain the spiking.

Whatever the codec, try converting or reconverting the clip to Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake. By default it will create the above mentioned codec. Then see if it plays O.K. in iMovie.

As a workaround, you might try one of the settings in the iMovie Equalizer feature to see if you can knock the top off the spiking. You can access the equalizer from the tool bar at the top right of your screen. Perhaps "Treble Reduce" might work.

Hmmm. This is puzzling. Try importing the videos outside of iMovie, such as into the Photos app, or onto your desktop with the Image Capture app on your Mac. (You could import them into iMovie from there later if they play O.K.) If there is still spiking, even after reconverting, then the issue likely is not iMovie. Perhaps there was some glitch in the way that the video was recorded. Does it happen with all audio tracks, or just the one? If you use a different camera, do you still get the issue?

Just in case, if you haven't tried it already, you might do the old standby of opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys, and then selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears. You could also try creating a new iMovie project and see if the problem replicates there.

-- Rich