Got a Sony CyberShot W30 and do not hear sound in iMovie?
18/02/07 12:07 Filed in: Technology
So.. like me. You have got yourself a Sony Cybershot W30 (and I've no doubt over Cybershots have a similar issues).
Why not, it's good value. Has a decent lens and offers plenty of shots per battery life.
But here's the bad. You plug in your camera, OS X detects it fine. You can import or simply copy of movie files over.
What's more, when you open them in QuickTime all seems well. The movies play, the sound is bright and perky.
The trouble only starts when you import the movies into iMovie.
iMove, as you know, converts any video footage into its default DV format and it is during this conversion that the sound is lost.
Careful examination of the native movie format of the Cybershot shows that it is Mpeg 1 640x480 MUXED. It's the MUXED part that's causing the problems. My other camera is an Olympus C-770UZ. It sports MP4 format, with AAC sound. So it's easy for iMovie to seperate video from sound.
Not so for the Mpeg1. iMovies needs a little help.
Now there are lots of options and applications out there that will do the work, and I don't claim to have exclusive knowledge. However, I did find an excellent, OpenSource solution that does just the trick.
The application in question is MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5. It runs on both Apple and Windows.
To convert your video, simply drop the video into the Dice (you'll see what I mean when you use the software). Then to cut all the corners you can choose File -> Export to DV...
Simply select you target location and the exported DV file not only has perfect audio, but its in the correct format to import into iMovie.
Perfect!
Why not, it's good value. Has a decent lens and offers plenty of shots per battery life.
But here's the bad. You plug in your camera, OS X detects it fine. You can import or simply copy of movie files over.
What's more, when you open them in QuickTime all seems well. The movies play, the sound is bright and perky.
The trouble only starts when you import the movies into iMovie.
iMove, as you know, converts any video footage into its default DV format and it is during this conversion that the sound is lost.
Careful examination of the native movie format of the Cybershot shows that it is Mpeg 1 640x480 MUXED. It's the MUXED part that's causing the problems. My other camera is an Olympus C-770UZ. It sports MP4 format, with AAC sound. So it's easy for iMovie to seperate video from sound.
Not so for the Mpeg1. iMovies needs a little help.
Now there are lots of options and applications out there that will do the work, and I don't claim to have exclusive knowledge. However, I did find an excellent, OpenSource solution that does just the trick.
The application in question is MPEG Streamclip by Squared 5. It runs on both Apple and Windows.
To convert your video, simply drop the video into the Dice (you'll see what I mean when you use the software). Then to cut all the corners you can choose File -> Export to DV...
Simply select you target location and the exported DV file not only has perfect audio, but its in the correct format to import into iMovie.
Perfect!