Help! I'm confused.

Hers is what I did:

1) Connect up my brand spanking new GR-DV3000 camera to my old decrepid Phillips CDI.

2) Play a video-CD on the CDI and tape it on the DV Camera.

3) Connect the camera to the iMac using the firewire port and started up iMovie.

4) Press play on iMovie and import.

5) Eventually I get the entire video-CD on my hard drive and I can play it in iMovie no problems.

6) Select export in iMovie and choose QuickTime & CD options, after about an hour I end up with a 210Mb movie file.

The problem is that the resulting movie file has no sound! What did I do wrong?

Amen-Moses

did you have an audio cable coming out of the CDI and into the camera?

MacAddikt said:

did you have an audio cable coming out of the CDI and into the camera?

Click to expand...

Yes, when I play back the movie in iMovie it has sound but when I play back the QuickTime file it doesn't.

I am a bit confused about the lower pane in iMovie, i.e if I play the movie with the three audio tracks ticked I get no sound yet when I untick thenm I get sound and can edit the volume, what is that all about?

Should I have re-ticked the audio tracks before exporting the movie?

I wouldn't call this at all intuitive.

Amen-Moses

As an aside I have just noticed that the iMovie window tells me I have "56.16 GB free" and the Finder window tells me I have "54.84 GB available".

One of them is obviously bad at math, which is it?

Amen-Moses

I suggest http://uwp.edu/~zamzo000/FSDiskView.html

expect an update soon, school is almost over and we'll be working more

[edit]
its what i get for trying to do it with out pressing that http:// (outdated link removed) button

its basically designed for people who use like Final Cut Pro, and Premiere.. those kind of apps which can double HD usage quickly.

That's a bad link Graphite.

http://uwp.edu/~zamzo000/FSDiskView.html

^ That's What He Meant ^

yeah, thnx. I can't ever seem to remember how to code those things

After a nights sleep I RTFM, apparently the little tick boxes work backwards, they are called "mute" buttons so I assumed that you tick them to mute the track but you don't you untick them. But when I tick them I can't hear the track when I play the movie in iMovie.

Amen-Moses

So when you can't hear the audio, and you export, you get audio?

Seems wierd. Have you tried Final Cut Pro? Even more confusing!

Emrys said:

So when you can't hear the audio, and you export, you get audio?

Seems wierd. Have you tried Final Cut Pro? Even more confusing!

Click to expand...

I converted a QT movie to DV and used iMovie to edit it (have you seen the Eminem video for Lose Yourself? Well in my version in the shots where he sings in the street it is raining and I've made a few other subtle alterations ) and everything is fine.

Also with DV I have fimed myself all is fine but with stuff converted through the camera from the PCI the audio doesn't play when the "mute" buttons (actually they should be called "track select" buttons) ticked but does play when they are unticked. Weird beyond words!

I bought a Logitech cordless TrackMan optical today, makes things a little easier (I'm allergic to keyboard shortcuts and with seven buttons on it the trackman is just the ticket).

I'm a bit peeved that Apple didn't make iMovie use two tracks for video which would have been a vast improvement and I also haven't figured out how to do transitions without screwing up the audio timing (with two video tracks it is a simple task to line up the overlap where the transition should occur whilst leaving the audio track timing intact) but all in all it hasn't been too steep a learning curve, I may still get Final Cut Express some time soon as I find iMovie a bit limiting.

Amen-Moses

Have you seen this http://www.contourdesign.com ?

Emrys said:

Have you seen this http://www.contourdesign.com ?

Click to expand...

Yes, it is a bit pricey though. For 50 quid (about $65) I bought the Trackman Optical (look it up on Logitechs website it is a really nice peice of kit) and downloaded the latest drivers. Seems to be doing a great job so far in fact I've put the mouse in a drawer.

Amen-Moses

That one looks pretty cool. All kinds of programmable buttons. I always likes the Marbe Mouse. Seems very "Video Producer"ish...

Emrys said:

That one looks pretty cool. All kinds of programmable buttons. I always likes the Marbe Mouse. Seems very "Video Producer"ish...

Click to expand...

Well I've been using it for around 8 hours straight and haven't had to switch to the mouse at all.

For iMovie I program one of the buttons to do curl-T, one for lock-Click and two more (the thumb-up and down buttons) to do left arrow/right arrow and that pretty much increases productivity by a huge factor. In fact the way I have it configured I can do most of the clip splicing and editing using just my thumb!

I did away with the select-click as I don't use those menus for anything anyhow (well except for occasionally emptying the bin) so replaced it with double-click, now dragging and dropping, directory (sorry "folder" ) opening and application launching is all done by single clicks of forefinger or pinky and movement of the track ball (which is smooth and fast) by middle finger.

Now my entire hand is getting a workout rather than just my wrist and although I'll probably feel it tomorrow it certainly feels easier than using the mouse (which in my case I find tended to end up sitting on its own cable too often, I would try to click it and the **** thing wouldn't go down until I moved it).

The only down side so far is the wheel, it is too small (or my fingers too chubby) and too far back on the device (or my fingers are too long) for really comfortable use. still it is a small price to pay for all the positive aspects.

Definitely gets a 9 out of 10 rating from me even though it took me some self-persuading to buy such a wierd looking device.

One particularly good feature under OSX is that unlike wheel mice under Windross the wheel moves the nearest vertical scroll bar rather than only the one with the input focus, that means that in applications with multiple scroll bars I only have to move the pointer a tiny amount to scroll say the outer bar rather than the inner one. Navigating complex PDF files is a real pleasure now.

Amen-Moses