Help! My Movie Music Is Screwed Up!!!!, disaster....fear and loathing... Options

[tokyoroland]

I finished editing my music into my brother's movie in imovie ( the latest one ) on OSX. I burned it to dvd-r and when I play it, the sound totally screws up halfway through the movie!!! This is odd because it works just fine imovie and the qucktime movie is fine, too.

I thought it was a faulty dvd-r, but I tried another one and it did the exact same thing! help! possible errors:

1) the sound was mastered wrong. ( the girl who transferred it to cd from minidisc mastered it at a low level, so I turned up the volume ( normalized it) in Spark.

2) Maybe I didn't format the dvd-r. Do I need to?

It isn't my computer because it messes up on my external dvd player as well as when I put it in my computer and play it.

PLEASE HELP! I don't know what to do, and I really want to finish this film. Should I go back to the music and NOT normalize it??

ANY suggestions will help...

- Jeffro

[Levon River]

Can you be a little more specific than "totally screws up"? How it screws up may have everything to do with narrowing down what the problem is. Normalizing the file shouldn't be the problem, especially if, as you say, it plays fine in iMovie and Quicktime. And you don't want to waste time chasing red herrings.

Have you loaded the normalized file into any other audio application and checked it there? What's the rate you used for saving it? 44.1? 48? Do you know?

Any additional information you can give on the exact nature of what happens to the sound after it's written to DVD will go a long way toward people being able to help you debug it.

[tokyoroland]

The music was recorded at 48. When I say the sound screw up, I mean that it sort of just goes off tune and back. Its hard to explain. Everything just starts to screw up in the piano's voice, like a cat is sitting on it. The sound makes a loud "pop" sound once in a while also.

no, I have not tried to load this file into any other audio appls. because I don't have any. Do you know of any free ones?

This is so strange. Something must of messed up while burning. could it be because I have a " motion " menu?? There is a little bit of sound at the menu, and the little movie icon is at the very end of the movie, so it is black, and no images show up before you click to play it ( in idvd2 )

Could Logic fix this? I am going to get it in a few weeks, but I really don't want to wait that long.

thanks for the advice, Levon.


- Jeffro

[Synthetic]

sounds to me like something was happening during the DVD making process that is causing your problems... maybe you should look at the settings and prefs closely for your app that you use to burn the DVD. I would also make sure your HD is defragged and running smoothly. I really don't think it should be any problem with the actual audio itself if it plays fine in quicktime.

[Levon River]

The music was recorded at 48.

Go here:

http://www.spies.com/~franke/SoundApp/

Get and install SoundApp and use its conversion settings to convert your normalized file to 44.1/16 bit. (SoundApp isn't OS X-ified yet but runs fine in Classic.) Then play it all the way through in SoundApp, Quicktime, and iMovie. Then take another run at it and see what happens.

[tokyoroland]

Levon-

I am confused about this program... How do I convert my audio? It is only edited in imovie and the exported quicktime file.

When I clicked " convert " on imovie, nothing happened. When I tried the same thing on the quicktime movie file, it said "error"

Should I convrt the whole cd and re-edit the movie all over?

Please help me figure out how to use this program. I appreciate it.

- jeffrr4o

[tokyoroland]

!!!

I think I may have just found out the problem. I went into Spark and I realized that my music is 41, not 48. But in imovie, it says that it is 48. So, in Spark, I am resampling it from 41 to 48.

Is this a good move? I won't do it until I get some advice.


Levon- I guess Spark can do what soundapp can do also.... Or can it?

I can resample it at any number on the list.....should I convert it to 48? In imovie, on export, it says that it uncompressed and in 48, but m Spark, it says that its in 41


jeffro

[Levon River]

Hi, tokyoroland.

I'm somewhat at a disadvantage here because I'm not sure what formats you've had that audio in, or in which app. My suggestion about converting to 44.1 was somewhat a shot in the dark; other rates can sometimes cause problems between apps. Since you say one app is calling it 44 and another is calling it 48, that tells me that there is *something* going on with the file that ain't right. Based on that alone, I'd say that's a good trail to keep sniffing down. So here we go...

I recommended SoundApp only because it has always been *very* reliable in its conversions for me (I usually use it for batch conversions), and I haven't used Spark for conversion/resampling enough to have a useful opinion. But, sure, use Spark for downsampling. It's a professional audio program by professional audio people, and it should be fine.

You say you only have an exported QT file for the audio? I'm not sure what you mean by that, but just to get back to basics, here's the only thing I can recommend: that you back up to your *original* audio file--the one you started with, from whoever transferred/recorded it, in whatever format it's in. Load it into Spark, normalize it, and save it, all by itself, as a 44.1 AIFF file (renaming it to whatever degree necessary--maybe just an .aif extension?--not to overwrite your original file). *All* the apps that are going to be involved should then recogize that as a 44.1 AIFF file. And at that point, you should be on safe, solid, cross-app, media-compliant firm ground.

Only then (if I were you--and I realize I'm not ) would I pull the new, clean, normalized, 44.1 AIFF audio file into iMovie (*first* clearing out the iffy audio you had in there!), and commence editing.

Theoretically, that ought to work with everything across the boards. If that doesn't work, you're out of my league at that point. Good luck with it! I know how frustrating it can be.

[tokyoroland]

Levon, or anyone else:

Perhaps this info may help. The original file was indeed recorded at 41 and as an AIFF file. Should it be saved as an SD 11 or WAV file? Will this help? Also, it was saved at 16 bit. Would it be better to change it to 8, 24, or 32(floats) bit???

I wonder if any of these factors could have affected the sound to mess up when I put it in imovie, and maybe a dvd cannot recognize Aiff, or what bit??

Remember that in imovie it recognizes my 41 Hz as 48 Hz.


I will be awaiting anyone's reply

- jeffro

p.s. would it help to convert my music to mp3 in itunes? ( the whole cd, then edit )? I am doing it now just as an option...

[Levon River]

Remember that in imovie it recognizes my 41 Hz as 48 Hz.

Is that *after* you normalized it? If so, did you save the normalized file as 48 Hz? If not, there is something wrong with the file. Period. Twice now I've given you exact step-by-step things to do to start narrowing down the problem, and so far I can't see that you've actually done even one of them. Instead, each time you post there is some new wrinkle, and some other piece of vital information omitted that requires more questions. When you've done every single step I've already laid out in detail, get back to me, or maybe somebody else here can help you.

p.s. would it help to convert my music to mp3 in itunes?

That can only degrade the audio.

( the whole cd, then edit )?

CD? Now there's a "whole cd" of "music". I no longer have any idea at all what you're talking about. Good luck.