iMovie 11 Audio Equalizer doesn't really work??

[pwschuh]

When I select a clip, Inspect it, and they select Audio and then Custom Equalizer, when I slide ALL of the sliders all the way down to the bottom, should not the soundtrack of my clip then be silent?

It doesn't work that way. The sound gets muted but everything, including voices, is still very clearly audible.

I have clip that I want to eliminate the voices. I tried adjusting down the sliders in the human voice audio range and they were still there. Then I tried adjusting them all down and the voices (and all of the background noise) is all still there, just quieter.

What gives? Thanks.

 

[Dave Braine]

Select clip, Clip Menu>Mute Clip. Should work.

 

[pwschuh]

Select clip, Clip Menu>Mute Clip. Should work.

Dave, I understand that I can mute the whole clip, but I want to use the Equalizer like a real equalizer and just mute certain frequencies (human voice). There is other important sound content in other freq ranges that needs to stay in the clip. I'm just trying to get a confirmation that the iMovie 11 Equalizer is not a real equalizer, or is there some trick to using it that I haven't figured out?

 

[Dave Braine]

but I want to use the Equalizer like a real equalizer and just mute certain frequencies (human voice).

You can't do that in iMovie. All the audio is on one track, so if you adjust the volume/equalizer settings, it affects the whole track.

If I understand equalizers correctly, then they can either emphasize or de-empahsize certain frequencies rather than have the ability to eliminate a particular frequency altogether.

 

[pwschuh]

You can't do that in iMovie. All the audio is on one track, so if you adjust the volume/equalizer settings, it affects the whole track.

If I understand equalizers correctly, then they can either emphasize or de-empahsize certain frequencies rather than have the ability to eliminate a particular frequency altogether.

I don't think we're quite on the same page yet. I know that all of the audio is on a single track. On that single audio track, I want to remove the freq range that contains the human voice. Yes, I understand that all other sounds that are in the same range will also be removed. That's OK because the other sounds I really want to remain are in different freq ranges.

Also, I'm no sound engineer, but I believe that with a real studio equalizer, when you slide a control all the way down, thats a band pass filter. Nothing in that freq range assigned to that control is getting through.

I've never used Garage Band before, but if I bring the video into garage band, would it have this capability?

 

[Dave Braine]

The range of human hearing is from about 20hz to 20000hz. The iTunes equalizer has 10 bands: 32, 64, 125, 250, 500, 1k 2k 4k 8k 16khz. You can adjust those all the way down to minimum. It may well mute everything(although I'm not sure that it does) on those particular frequencies, but you can still hear the song coming through on the frequencies between those listed above.

Professional equipment may well be able to do what you want, but not what's with iMovie. Your biggest problem is that the voice is not on it's own separate track.