Am I stupid? Why does the Macbook whine when I record on iMovie?

[JubileeC]

Hi everyone - I need help before my hair falls out! Ok-- I am sure this is not an isolated problem, but searches for "whine" and "macbook" tend to come up with some issue about the noise of earlier MacBook Pros.

I need to record some vodcasts for my job and put these on YouTube. I got a Macbook specifically for this, because it would be easy to record using the built in iSight and edit these and put them on YouTube. But there seems to be a problem. There is an annoying "whine" everytime I record. I can't seem to get rid of it. Is my MacBook faulty? Or is there some easy way to get rid of it? I'm using iMovie and it's iSight record facility.

When recording using garageband, I don't have the whine. Is it to do with the camera?

My first post - please excuse me if it appears I am really naive.

 

[M@lew]

Is this a hardware or software whine? e.g. If you switch the volume off, does it whine?

If it's hardware, it's probably the fans as video encoding is a lot more taxing than audio.

 

[AlBDamned]

Is this a hardware or software whine? e.g. If you switch the volume off, does it whine?

If it's hardware, it's probably the fans as video encoding is a lot more taxing than audio.

Yeah I'd agree. Video encoding is one of the most taxing things you can do on computer so it's likely it's just winding up to full power. When the fans come on, check on Activity Monitor to see what percentage of the CPU, memory, HD etc is being used, and it will likely be the cause.

 

[JubileeC]

Thanks

Yes, it seems to be the hardware. I recorded some audio using Audacity and there was no whine. Then I started up Photobooth, which has a live video feed, and there it was - that annoying whine. So this means that I can't really use the Macbook for recording videos, as the whine is just too annoying. I'm going to guess that if I use an external mike, this problem will go away...