iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Problems with Sound

Sound problems are especially frustrating when you’re working with digital video, because they bear no resemblance to sound problems with more familiar equipment. In any other situation, if sound is too low or too loud, for example, you can adjust it with a knob. But what you do about random electronic beeps and buzzes that weren’t there on the original tape?

Sound Is Too Soft

If one particular clip is too soft, see page 352.

If, however, the entire movie soundtrack plays back too quietly, it’s probable that iMovie has nothing to do with the problem. Instead, your overall Mac volume is probably too low. Visit the Sound panel of System Preferences and adjust the output volume of your machine, or tap the Volume Up key on the top row of your keyboard. Make sure that iMovie’s own volume slider (just above the Movie Track) is up all the way, too.

Random Beeps or Pops

It’s hard to imagine anything more frustrating than finding a permanent—or, worse, intermittent—buzzing, crackling, or popping in the audio tracks of your project.

This problem has been on many minds, and its victims have come up with various solutions. Fortunately, most people manage to solve it by following one of these steps:

• Just as there are video dropouts, as described in the beginning of this appendix, cheap tapes may sometimes give you audio dropouts. The problem is exactly the same: a tiny bit of dirt or a nonmagnetized particle on the tape. But this time, it affects the audio, not the video. Try cleaning ...