iMac, iMovie, and iDVD: iCan't Hear My Movie

Factual Questions
1

I’m making a movie on my iMac, using iMovie and iDVD. When I burn a DVD, the sound gets all screwed up and distorted; I have to turn the TV way, way down for it to be at a manageable volume, and the sound is all garbled. The sound is fine in iMovie playback, and the volume settings are at the same level that I use for playing music in iTunes.

To be more specific: It sounds as if the audio has been turned way up, re-recorded, and then turned back down; high and low tones have static around the edges, and in general it sounds really shoddy. I can hear it, but it’s far from the quality I hear in playback in iMovie. I’ve run into this problem with discs burned on other Macs as well.

I did a search for older threads and found this one from 2002, in which Cartooniverse said:

That’s a pretty good description of the problem I’m running into; unfortunately, the link provided by NurseCarmen in that thread appears to have been changed or something, as it just goes to the GQ main page now.

I’ve tried Google and looked through the Apple support forums, but haven’t found a specific discussion of this issue; I’ll try there if no one here can help.

Suggestions?

2

with a thread title so brilliant, so one just hasta come along and give this guy a hand?

alternatively, the appleinsider.com genius bar can solve most problems lickity-split.

3

Does this problem continue even when you play the DVD on your imac? If not, it could be your DVD player doesn’t like recorded DVDs. Recordable discs have a lower luminescence, and some older DVD players have trouble streaming data off them. If the problem persists on your imac… Gosh, it’s been a while since I’ve used iDVD, but it could be that you’re authoring your movies in imovie with an unacceptably high audio mix, and during the mpeg encoding process, the audio is automatically lowered to a level that won’t distort and damage your home theater speakers. That’s just a guess, since I’m not even sure if IDVD will do that, but that definitely would result with sound you’re describing.

4

:smack:

Good call; having now tried it around the house, I see that the DVD plays fine on our other DVD player, my iMac, my laptop, and my wife’s laptop. Apparently, only that specific player is choking on it.

Very curious. The DVD player on which it doesn’t work is a two-year-old Sony, while the player on which it does work is a five-year-old Sony. I hope it plays properly on the players of the evaluating committees of the festivals I’m sending it to.

Re. the audio mix in iDVD, I can’t find any setting along those lines that I could change. In iMovie, the sound on most clips is at the “normal” level, which is about 70% volume. None are set higher than that; only when fading out a sound clip did I lower it below that.

Thanks for the suggestions, TPRg.