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

[filarion]

Spark shows a big red "resampling" sign if you play back an 48 khz file on a 44.1 khz system. Logic automatically resamples on the fly since 5.2 too I believe. (something that was very annoying for me in a past movie project as well).

Basically, samplerate conversion should be done by your DVD authoring tool. Nothing you really need to worry about unless you're working with old Avids or something like that.

I think one part of your problem is the whole "normalizing" thing without having headroom. Really sucks, but if you've got some continuous clipping in that file then it might screw up the sound. So.. normalize to -12 db and -then- try it. Digital audio is unforgiving, but 12 db headroom allows for a bit of freedom, although I'd prefer 20db. dunno how noisy your source is.

[tokyoroland]

ok... my cd is all one track. dont ask me, I didnt do it...

and the sound is low at the highed level... if I lower it, I wont be able to hear it at all!!!

[Levon River]

ok... my cd is all one track. dont ask me, I didnt do it...

"It was like that when I got here!"

I think, tokyoroland, that just means that your cd was recorded in "Disk at Once" mode. That shouldn't be a problem.

I urge you to start thinking with your audio as a file, not as a cd. That it happens to have come to you on cd media isn't the important issue for what you are trying to do; there is still an audio file there, and that is what you need to be thinking in terms of in order to edit it into your movie. Yes, as has been pointed out in this thread, some programs automatically do resampling, others don't, others handle it better than others... I personally don't think you need that complication added to what you are already up to your eyeballs in right now.

So here are my simple, step-by-step recommendations for you to eliminate as many potential problems as possible, and it's absolutely the best I can do:

1. Get your audio file off of the CD and onto your hard drive using any of *many* freeware and shareware programs that will rip that audio file off of the CD. Make certain that you set the settings to save the audio file as a 16 bit, 44.1 AIFF file. Let's say you name it "Piano.aif"

2. Use Spark, Peak, Cacaphony, or any app of your choosing to open "Piano.aif" and increase the levels to your liking, or just normalize the entire file (and maybe even add a little reverb or eq or compression if you're feeling adventurous--or not!). Then, when you're happy with it, save "Piano.aif" back to your hard drive, making sure you're saving it as a 16 bit, 44.1 AIFF file. (Save it under a different name, like "Piano-FIXED.aif," or save it with the "Piano.aif" name, overwriting the file on your hard drive, since you have the orginal still on CD.)

3. Import your fixed 16 bit, 44.1 AIFF file into your movie editing program, and edit it against the video to your heart's content.

Theoretically (famous last words ), that should eliminate any problems that might be *inherent* in the audio file itself. If your final edited, output movie *still* exhibits audio weirdnesses *after* you have taken the above steps, then it's something in the movie editing program that you would need to address with the manufacturer (or with the docs).

Please, please go through though simple steps above, though, so you know with certainty that you have done everything possible to import a clean, unquestionable audio file into your movie editing program.

And good luck with it. You'll get there.

[tokyoroland]

Levon-

that is exactly what I did in the first place. I only did all of that 48 hz crap after I originally did it all in 41.1 hz. The result is that my movie works perfect in imovie, but screw up when I export to idvd. I just read the imvoe help topic in os9 ( its probably same as in osx) about how to record cd audio in a movie. I might try this, ans sacrafice the sound being a little low, since I just can't import an AIFF file without it screwing up in quicktime format and of course when I try to burn it to cd. I am just going to get my minidisc transferred all over again, with track splits, and of course at 41.1 hz, and then edit my music in all over again.

Right now, I am exporting the movie in os9 to see if it works here...

[Levon River]

I only did all of that 48 hz crap after I originally did it all in 41.1 hz. The result is that my movie works perfect in imovie, but screw up when I export to idvd.

Okay. I didn't realize you had gone through all those steps. I think the information you just gave above about exporting from iMovie to iDVD may be narrowing this down.

Here's the only clue that came to mind when you mentioned that, which I went hunting for and found in the Final Cut Pro User's Guide:

"Note: If working with a DV sequence, convert audio CD files from 44.1 kHz to 48 or 32 kHz before importing them into your sequence. If you import CD audio files directly, you will experience audible distortions in the audio."

You had earlier said "the audio was recorded at 48." But you also said "in imovie, it says that it is 48" after saying Spark identified it as being 44.1.

It got awfully confusing.

My suggestion for converting it to 44.1 with a reliable app was based on knowing that iMovie will cheerfully import a 44.1 AIFF, and, when you choose export for Quicktime, it converts the audio down to 22, and when you choose to export to iDVD, it says it's exporting the audio at 48 (pay no attention to the man behind the curtain). Now, though, it's looking like an "undocumented feature" of iMovie might be reflected in the quote of note from the Final Cut Pro manual above: that you need to *start* with a 48 or 32 kHz file if you're working with a "DV sequence"--*not* let iMovie do the resampling on export to iDVD.

In that case you were on the right track earlier in this thread when you said you were going to resample from 44.1 to 48. If I then steered you wrong and cost you more time, I deeply apologize. But I had gotten the impression earlier (and may have been wrong) that the problem was originally with it being 48, and/or munged (because of it being seen as 44.1 in one place, 48 somewhere else). That sounded like an inherent problem with the file.

I'm still confused (or perhaps more than ever) where the problem originally entered, though, if your audio was recorded at 48 to begin with. Maybe when you originally normalized it, you might have saved it as 44.1, and then you saw 48 in iMovie only at export to iDVD? Is that where the two different kHz rates came into this? Oh, well.

I hope the note from the FCP manual helps unravel this. For my sake as much as yours.

[tokyoroland]

Be confused no more, Levon! I fixed it!!! Thank God....


All I did was export it in os9 and put it into idvd2 in osx. It was all osx's fault!!! Thanks for all the help, sorry, about the shadiness of details... My film is finally done and the dvd works great!!!

To add to that, I finally got Logic today!!


- jeff

[Levon River]

Be confused no more, Levon! I fixed it!!! Thank God....

Woo-hoo! Well done!

All I did was export it in os9 and put it into idvd2 in osx. It was all osx's fault!!!

Interesting. Goes right in line with this quote from another thread in this forum re: problems with an M-audio sound card:

"We are working with Apple to pinpoint exactly what the issue is with the degradation of audio in Jaguar. This is apparently a problem several audio vendors are experiencing. Once we can get to the bottom, we will post a fix on our site. In the meantime, I would strongly recommend using OS 10.1.5 or OS 9.2 until there is a fix."

Thanks for all the help...

You call that help?!

My film is finally done and the dvd works great!!!

That's all that counts in the end. Glad to know that the problem is in OS X, though (well, not glad at all, but you know what I mean), and that we aren't both entirely crazy. That is, of course, if you're running Jaguar. If not, then...

To add to that, I finally got Logic today!!

Woo-hoo! You're on a roll.