audio effects in new iMovie '08 - what's to become of Logic Pro ? what about a truly integrated media authoring environment?

[Kevin Callahan]

After spending a few hours experimenting with capturing high-quality  
audio in iMovie (iMovie 08, as iMovie 6 - doesn't allow you to  
capture independent audio and video sources do disk) , we ended up  
pushing audio directly into the camcorder and passing it through to  
iMovie.  The result was mediocre to bad.  Lot's of hiss, less than  
desirable sampling.  But, because there appears no solution at the  
moment, I thought I could fix the audio to some degree using the  
built-in EQ and Reverb in iMovie -- except that I can't find the AU  
plugins in iMovie '08.  Are they no longer supported?  I have  
LogicPro installed .. along with other AU plugins that should be  
available to me as audio effects in iMovie!  We're going backwards!

Okay -- the solution was to export the movie and drop it into a new  
Logic Pro project - and to use the audio effects, plugins that come  
with LPro (a $900 piece of software).

I did what I could with EQ to remove the hiss .. and added a tad of  
reverb.  Ready now to Export audio to Movie.

In Logic Pro, the Export Audio to Movie creates a COPY of your movie  
and "bounces" your selected audio tracks into the copy.  Nice!

Except that it doesn't work.

I spent another 2 hours trying figure out what I was doing wrong.
<http://logicprohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=7775>

I finally Googled and discovered composers and professional musicians  
have been complaining about this bug AT LEAST as far back as January  
2007 -- and as recent as June 28/07.

My workaround was to export the audio only from Logic Pro into  
an .aif file.

I then opened the movie in GarageBand - muted the audio track for the  
movie (GB extracts the audio track for you) ..
and dropped in the effected audio track I made in LPro.

GB lets you export to numerous formats for the web, iTunes, AppleTV  
etc (no iPhone).

How to get the movie to YouTube?
Do I drop it back into iMovie to upload it to YouTube so I can brag  
about that feature?

Anyway --  the upshot:

	Can't capture high-end audio in iMovie 08 direct to disk -- have to  
grab audio from Camcorder (which is invariably less than acceptable).
	To fix the audio or add plugin effects, you have to send the movie  
to another App -- LogicPro or GarageBand.  If you use Logic Pro, you  
get to use all those nifty plugins you've spent thousands of dollars on.
	But, you can't export the audio to the movie.  You first export the  
audio to a new audio track.
	You then load the movie you made in iMovie (which you had to export  
earlier), into GarageBand, mute the original audio track, sync the  
video with the audio you exported from Logic Pro.
	You can then share out the movie from GarageBand to your target.  
(But if you want to use the upload to YouTube features, you'll have  
to bring your movie back into iMovie 08 .. ).

	Maybe someone has a better workaround/solution/workflow ..
	I'd like to hear it.
	
	I feel like I'm working in a PC/Windows environment.  Are Apple  
Product and Program managers not talking to each other?

Kevin


http://www.kevincallahan.org/
http://www.kevincallahan.org/software/accessorizer.html
http://www.xeniamara.com/Welcome.html

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