I'm not an iMovie user, but you should be able to export the audio out of iMovie. Bias (http://www.bias-inc.com/) makes several audio programs that may be of interest. Peak, Deck and SoundSoap should do just about everything you'd ever need. Unfortunately they are not as easy to learn as iMovie. You might want to look into FCPE. It probably offers the features you need.

I did check out the web site. You're right - too complicated for me. I've decided to try SonicFire, mainly because it seems to offer drop-in tracks from a reasonably diverse (though sometimes costly) library. Should work with FCE, too, which I own but haven't yet used. (Will try working with it for my next, much, much smaller project.) Thanks for taking the time to help out with my problem.

I agree with you Patricia, that SonicFire might seem costly. I have used it for some time myself now, and I think it's a very fine tool for scoring my videos. It's certainly very easy to learn how to use the software. I have even purchased a lot of their music/sound palette CDs, and must say that I am impressed by the quality and flexibility they deliver.

You can import audio from cds directly into iMovie. I dont use iMovie much anymore but I've imported lots of cd audio into it and you can do a rough chop up edit in iMovie as well to get the selections you need from the track and delete the rest. this can be done in quicktime as well.If its not for sale commercially and only for home viewing you should have no problems using any music you want.

Thank you. Problem is that my CDs don't fit the bill. 50's music and patriotic songs aren't part of my current collection. Plus, when you are not musical, you cut tracks off in the wrong place. (By the way, if anyone finds a cure for humming to music when you can't carry a tune - nothing worse than getting picked up by your own mike - let me know.)

Patricia,
I think Sonic Fire Pro will fill your bill better and quicker than Soundtrack. Using SF's "Maestro" feature you can select a music style and length and then a specific variation. SF will then generate a piece as close to your target length as possible which you can then export to a separate file, then import and place into your iMovie project.

You will probably need to also purchase one or more libraries for SF to get the selection(s) you need. More info at the SmartSound site (http://www.smartsound.com/sonicfire/).

Thanks, Ken. I ordered SonicFire Pro yesterday as well as a couple of their CD collections. I am learning by trial and error that once you decide how you want your clips to flow, you work on sound first, then transitions and titles (at least in iMovie). I seem to be doing it absolutely backwards, and I'm sure I'm going to have to redo a few more times, which is a bit much for a home movie, but a good way to learn, nonetheless. (Oh, yes, the best way would be to learn to use the camera to its fullest first, but some of us don't learn that way.)

you know after you import your clips they are in the clips pane...then when you drag and drop them in they aren't in the clips pane anymore?? is there a way to use clips but still have the clip there so i can use it more than once?

Alan,

Hold down the option key as you drag the clip from the bin to the timeline. Repeat this as many times as is necessary.

This is my first post so pardon the delay.
Here are list of plugin sites i found the other evening.
I haven't tried them out but there's a wealth compared to a few years ago.

http://www.stupendous-software.com/

http://www.umlautllama.com

http://www.csb-digital.com/iplugins/community

http://www.virtix.com/imovie/

http://www.ezedia.com/products/eZedia_plug-ins/iMovie_plug-ins/eZeMatte_plug-in.html

They just came out with volume 5 & 6
fantstic stuff,
I have all 1 to 6
love them
Bruce

In FCP you can use external drives as most of you know.

Question, can you do the same thing with iMoive.

I was thinking, I guess if I put iMovie on the external drive, that would work.

apple doesn't support using external drives with FCP... external drives work for some people and not for others. It will depend on which Mac you have, whether or not the firewire bus is shared, how fragmented your drives are, which chipset/bridge your firewire enclosure is using, which drive is inside it, etc.

With iMovie you should install it onto an internal drive and put your projects on the external drive if you want to use them.

I'm not sure what you are talking about.

I've used Final Cut Pro with an external drives, and I'm sure most people do.

You can select which drive to use, using the strach disc.

What I'm asking is with iMovie, I believe it was meant to be a cheap edit solutoin and 99%of the people using it would use their internal harddrive.

Is there a way to use iMovie, but have the footage on the faster external drive?

right now I don't see how.

There is no way within iMovie to specify the capture drive.

According to my copy of the iMovie manual, if you don't have enough hard drive space "you may want to install another hard disk or attach an external hard disk." That being said, you may run into all kinds of problems, as implied by Glenn. I have a 200GB 7200RPM Maxtor that I use for storage only. The one time I tried to export to my camcorder from files on the Maxtor, the end product was unusable. If you check other posts in this forum, you'll find others runnning FCX and FCP running into problems as well. For a better understanding of how divergent people's experiences can be, try the apple/support/discussions/iMovie forum.

With iMovie you can put/create your project file on an external drive for iMovie to capture to the external/firewire drive. Or you can move existing projects there by moving the folder then project files are in.

2- Regarding FCP and firewire drives, apple does not guarantee that firewire drives will work with Final Cut Pro. Some people have problems with firewire drives and some people don't.

3- Stick with internals if you can. If not then you probably have to go with the external drive route (which may not work...). Which Mac are you using?

Yes, You can have iMovie on the internal drive and edit on the external. I do it all the time. When it comes time to start a new project just specify where you want it.

As for problems capturing to the external drive there are many different causes. A common cause is the use of a Canon camera. There is something about Canon's implementation of firewire that doesn't quite work well with external drives.

As I have a Canon I regularly capture to my internal hard drive then move the entire folder to the external for editing. It works fine.

Same here. I have a Xternal Lacie 120GB, and so far it's been working fine with iMovie.

Anyone deal with audio drift in Imovie? How are you correcting this?

Also, I'm interested in getting a few helpful books on Final Cut Express. Recommendations?

Is your camera footage 32khz/12bit? It needs to be in 48khz/16bit.

16bits. The drift doesn't happen all the time. Here and there.

Ok I'm stumped.

I saw a nice FCE book in the Apple section at CompUSA, sorry but I don't remember the title.

How many frames does it drift and is it repeatable? There is not much you can adjust in iMovie. Have you tried recapturing the material? If so, does it drift in the same spot? You might try exporting and importing as a QuickTime. What version OS and iMovie are you using? How full is your hard drive and how much ram do you have? Does it only drift on longer captures? If so, you might want to limit the length of your captures.

Yeah, no audio timeline for video sound in Imovie! I haven't tried anything other than the original captures. Well, the reason I ask about FCE books is because I also have that to play with, it's just that I'm new to NLE and wanted to warm up on something simple.
But you know what. When I first got and used FCE two months ago, I captured footage shot with the same camera that I used to shoot the footage that I'm having trouble with in imovie. I captured quite a bit in FCE then, and almost all of it had to be rendered, it had this electonic booping throughout the audio (FCE's signal that material must be rendered, according to the manual). Could these issues be related?
Thanks Jeff for thoughts on books. If it's in print, I'll be able to find it. And thanks, Glenn, for giving it the old college whack :-) .

The beeps mean the audio needs to be rendered. There are several causes, do a search and you'll see I've covered this topic in the past. If you still have problems, post details about your computer, OS, software, etc. so I can trouble shoot the issues.

Couldn't say off hand exactly how many frames off the audio is, but if, in some footage, a person were to say, "Yes.", the sound of the word would be heard, with the lips moving immediately after.

iMovie and FCE don't play very well since iMovie clips require their sound portion to be rendered. If you captured in FCE then make sure all your settings match up to NTSC 48khz.

Does the sync get worse gradually or is it consistently off?

Generally, it gets worse.

ok I will try another stab at this. If you turn on your camera's display and play back footage, does it say 12bit or 16bit? If it's 12bit then iMovie will crap itself according to the apple knowledge base. Sorry if you already tried this.

I will check, but I remember switching to 16 all those months ago. Thanks, Glen.

I connect my Hi-8 camcorder (or Hi-8 player) through a SONY 950 digital camcorder and then firewire to iMovie. Small black bands appear at the edges, larger on the left edge. When transferring VHS video, the same bands appear but smaller. The same happens on another Mac. An Apple store rep says it happens because Hi-8 and VHS are not exactly 4:3 and so do not fit exactly into the iMovie frame. This doen't sound right - both tape types dislplay properly on a TV. Could Apple be right? Would it help to use a dedicated analog to digital converter instead of the 950?

I have successfully put Hi8 footage thru a Hi8 camera onto a Min DV tape using XL1s and then Firewired into FCP and I don't remember this problem. I think it worked fine.

I'm sure I didn't have to re-scale it when it was in the timeline.

It might be that the sensor/CCD chip on the hi8 doesn't have the pixels on the side. This is to save costs or something. the hi8 format is still 4:3 like DV.

I don't think an analog-digital converter would help. You should be fine since the black bands do not show up on TV (they fall in the overscan area- your TV crops stuff).

The same thing happens when I transfer VHS video except the bands are smaller.

You're right! The bands don't show when played on a TV.

ThinkSecret discusses a possible major upgrade to iMovie (3.5) as possibly being released soon. Reports have it as nearing or already being at gold master status. Speculation has the release as occurring during Macworld (?) in January.

Wonder if there might be updates to iPhoto and other iLife products at the same time.....

This may be a dumb question...

When I capture video from my camcorder into my Mac, using a FireWire cable, am I saving the full resolution and all the data on the tape onto my hard drive?

I'll be getting FCE2 when it shows up in the local stores, but I want to make sure iMovie is a good transfer tool. I assume FCE2 will transfer all the resolution and data, right?

Thanks.

Cheers...

Um... kind of.

iMovie pretty much captures at full quality. However, it captures into a video format that Final Cut cannot play back without rendering. If you wish to use iMovie-captured clips then you must transcode them with batch export, re-capture in Final Cut, or render all the clips (every single time they move you have to render the clip to hear it).

iMovie also doesn't capture timecode and some other information, which you may or may not need. timecode information is useful for re-capturing specific clips.

Final Cut uses QuickTime files compressed with the DV codec as its native format, while iMovie uses DV Stream files. Glenn is correct, you will have to do some conversion so you might want to just wait to do your capturing until after you get FCE2. I believe that you can export your iMovie clips as Quicktime files (been awhile since I used iMovie) if you want to be ready in advance. You could then delete the iMovie files afterwards to free up space. But anyway you go there will be an extra step of file conversion or rendering.

Another approach to capturing during the interim might be to use a shareware program like BTV Pro which I believe will capture and save files in Quicktime format.

Whew! Thank you very much. I don't want to spend all that time capturing to my HD if it's in the wrong format. FCE2 should be in the stores any day now. I'll leave the video on tape for now.

iMovie....Sundance Film Festival

Wrangler Note [JL]: Article removed. Please follow this link (http://www.wired.com/news/digiwood/0,1412,61970,00.html?tw=wn_culthead_4) to read the original.

Great story! And it proves what they say about the art of filmmaking: it's not the equipment you use, it's the story you tell.

Indeed iMovie may not be, what people call, a "professional" NLE program but the truth is that working with limitations can bring out the best of one's creativity.

Thanks for posting this great story. It is a reminder to work with what you have and improvise. I can slip into thinking I can't make a "real film" until I have this or that equipment, or have access to SFX CDs, or acquire this or that software.

So I have set a goal for myself to do one really crappy short short a month. The crappier, the better. If I finish it and it sucks, I've succeeded. If I don't finish it, but the idea is still brilliant, I've failed.

I doubt if Cauette cared about what other people would think, or if he was using a cartoid vs an omni mic and so on. The irony is that it seems you really have to be passionate and oblivious to 'reality' to do something that gets this kind of critical attention...you can "decide" to be passionate and oblivious because that's how great work gets done...

"Great work" being, I guess, the opposite of what most of us do in this business, which is to make an actual living, in which case you might really want to know the difference between a cartoid and an omni, and you better worry about what someone else thinks, especially if she is your client...

And onward!

<<<--So I have set a goal for myself to do one really crappy short short a month. The crappier, the better. If I finish it and it sucks, I've succeeded. If I don't finish it, but the idea is still brilliant, I've failed.-->>>

Diane, I am with you 100%. Great attitude! Keep it up! I'd like to see one or more of your shorts.

>>Diane, I am with you 100%. Great attitude! Keep it up! I'd like to see one or more of your shorts.<<

SHOW them to OTHER people?
(I haven't advanced to that stage of enlightenment yet. :)

Actually, Stylianos, that's a great topic for discussion: showing your stuff to others, and how to get "tournament tough."

Is there any discernible difference in the quality of the fianl out put (say to DVD) bewteen iMovie and FCE (assuming the same simple basic transitions and ignoring titles)? Or is the advantage of FCE more options and more flexibility.

Thanks, Grant McClintock

There shouldn't be a quality difference, unless you apply some filters that iMovie doesn't have (like color correction filters).

iMovie is great for short projects, but I've found iMovie2 to be catastrophic for large complicated projects (somehow people in my high school had half their media disappear).

Taking this thread a little off track to note that for iMovie it's really important not to empty iMovie trash while editing and to be sure you have enough disk space with which to work. iMovie does not fall into the "nondestructive" NLE category. iMovie upgrades all seem to end up being dubbed "the worst yet," but I've had almost no problems with it (in version 3.03) and there are lots of nice, relatively inexpensive plug-ins on the market .

I am trying to make a a filmstrip in imovie. I am using photos from my iphoto library. When I drag a photo to the timeline, i create two photos in the time line.

Say I have the duration set for 5 seconds. I click on a picture of a bridge and drag it to the timeline I get two 5 second photos of the bridge. The two pictures are not linked, I can move them around the timeline. I just can't find out what is causing this.

Any thoughts would be a help.

Joe