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Help Needed: Add audio to picture - what format?

Maxiseller

Maxiseller

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 11, 2005
846
1
Little grey, chilly island.
Firstly, many thanks to all your help in advance.

I have a small project that I am working on for somebody who wants me to do the intro music (orchestral) for a rock music video that he is working on.

I have a cut of the final video, and I have written the music, and completed that side of things and now want to add the music to the video, and slap it on a DVD for him in full quality.

The problem is this: Evertime I import the original video file, iMovie somehow mangles it and it's original dimensions are lost. For example, at the beginning of the shot, a planet approaches the screen. On his original, this planet is round, but when I import it into iMovie it seems to compress the planet top and bottom of the screen.

I have played around with the "format" menu in iMovie, but to no avail.

The "Movie info" of the original when opened in Quickime are:

Format : PNG, 720 x 486
Millions+
16-bit integer (Big Endian)
Stereo etc...
FPS : 25 (need to keep it to PAL)
1.74 Gig

If anybody has any ideas on how I can easily add the audio without compromising the quality, I would be extremely grateful.

Kind thanks.
 
If you could be more detailed, what is the size in your imovie project? Right off is see your original file is 720 x 486 and should be 720 x 480. but without more detail I cant really tell. Can you re-render the original clip to 720 x 480? I believe imovie is distorting your clip so it fills the whole imovie area. Your original clips should be the same pixel ratio as your imovie project.

As far as the audio goes im not really sure what you mean when you say you are comprimising the quality.

You must remember that iMovie is a consumer level editing app and does have its limits. So you may not be able to fix some of your issues. Do you know/have After Effects? I would suggest using AE to composite your video then import to imovie to prepare for idvd.
 
If I remember correctly iMovie likes to distort images that dont appear to be in the correct aspect ratio and make them bigger than they should be. Only way to fix this is to get AE or FCE or somthing like that...

Dont understand your audio problem however, could you go into more detail?
 
Thanks for your replies.

Just to clarify that last sentance - iMovie does not distort the audio, rather I just want to add in some extra music without distorting the image!

I do have Final Cut express, but have no idea how to use it to be honest and when I clicked "open" and selected the file, a transparent background was showing, but the actual movie wouldn't play.

I have taken a screenshot of the "about movie" sceen in Quicktime, hoping that this will be all the information you need - if there is anything more specific, please let me know.
 

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freeny said:
If you could be more detailed, what is the size in your imovie project? Right off is see your original file is 720 x 486 and should be 720 x 480. but without more detail I cant really tell. Can you re-render the original clip to 720 x 480? I believe imovie is distorting your clip so it fills the whole imovie area. Your original clips should be the same pixel ratio as your imovie project.

As far as the audio goes im not really sure what you mean when you say you are comprimising the quality.

You must remember that iMovie is a consumer level editing app and does have its limits. So you may not be able to fix some of your issues. Do you know/have After Effects? I would suggest using AE to composite your video then import to imovie to prepare for idvd.
Click to expand...

I think you're absolutly right - iMovie does appear to be distorting the clip to fit its own canvas so to speak - but how do i "re-render"? I'm a total newbie to this sort of domain - music is certainly my forte!!

I have heard of AE but certainly not used it - is this a necessary purchase?
 
Where did the movie file come from? It could be a couple things.
1. 720*480/6 (it really is a non-issuse) is the correct size of NTSC, but you are PAL. DV PAL is 720*576.

2. If the planet mov was made in a program like After Effects and they used square pixels then you would see a distortion in iMovie 'cause iMovie (like all digital video for use on TV) uses unsquare pixels.

Also, DV audio should be 48k, not 44.1 (like it is on the planet mov).

So go back and tell the guy that gave you the movie that you need 720*576, unsquare pixels, and 48k audio.


Lethal
 
Maxiseller said:
I could ask him to do that I guess...

Is there no way of using it in its current state then with another program?
Click to expand...

If you have Quicktime Pro you could add the audio track to the QT movie your mate sent you.

This does rather depend on what iDVD does to it - if iDVD displays it fine when you add it to a DVD project, that could be your solution. If you don't have Quicktime Pro, it'll cost you about £25 (or whatever it is in $).

In Final Cut Express you may have to import the Quicktime Movie, then create a new sequence and drop the movie into it. Then add the audio.

You could then adjust the position of the movie track so it was centrally aligned...?

I hope you can follow all that. I'm in front of a PC and it's been while since I used FCE/P. :rolleyes:
 
Maxiseller said:
I think you're absolutly right - iMovie does appear to be distorting the clip to fit its own canvas so to speak - but how do i "re-render"? I'm a total newbie to this sort of domain - music is certainly my forte!!

I have heard of AE but certainly not used it - is this a necessary purchase?
Click to expand...
AE would be a pricey purchase just to rerender your video. If you plan on persuing video editing then it is an almost necessity.

There might be a way in Quicktime to rerender with some added/cropped pixels but not really sure. If you know someone with AE they should be able to fix your problem easily.
 
Maxiseller said:
Fantastic!

Quicktime Pro did the job first try! Totally worth the £25 - many thanks to everybody who offered advice, it's much appreciated.

Thanks again; Dan.
Click to expand...

Great to hear. Happy future editing...
 
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