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journal: mac
How iLife ruined my Christmas
Now, whenever I see one of those Apple commercials, I feel like reaching into the screen and strangling Justin Long.
It all started simply enough. In early November my Uncle’s granddaughter turned one year old and we had her birthday party. During the party, I ran around with a video camera recording everything so that I could make a nice video of the occasion. The taping went well; I captured well over an hour of footage. My plan was to take it down to a ten-minute video which I would put on DVD using iDVD. I would present this, together with a photo book from iPhoto, as a Christmas present to the parents and grandparents.
The first problem I had was importing the video into iMovie. My camera was one of those DVD burning models, and it turns out that Mac OS X is not capable of reading those natively. I had to download a number of applications, each one costing a little money in order to read a DVD created by the camcorder. No matter, I bought the applications (spending upwards of $100) and imported the video.
Over the next couple of weeks, I spent a few hours a day editing the video. You must understand this was my first video editing project, and also my first use of iMovie, so it was slow going, as I learned the ins and outs of the software. But I was surprised as to how easy things were. I’m no Francis Ford Coppola, but I was able to put together some basic edits, splice in audio, add bumpers, titles and captions, and ultimately create something that looked less like your average raw home video and more like a finished production.
With about a week to go, I had my movie. At that point, all I had to do was add some music and create a DVD. I had been spending time at the Apple Store looking at their workshops to see if I could get some tips on how to continue my project, and one of them showed how GarageBand is particularly useful for something like this. So I opened up GarageBand (which has a movie soundtrack editing feature), pulled in my video and added some music. GarageBand has a large library of readymade jingles which can be used in your projects royalty free. I made liberal use of their jingles. After a day or two, I was happy with my video, complete with musical score.
By this time I had just a couple of days to create my DVD so I would have enough time to label it, get the case for it, and wrap it together with the photo book. The photo book had already arrived, so that part was taking care of. All I had to do was create the DVD. I launched iDVD and got to work. iDVD was fairly easy, especially since it imported my movie from GarageBand. It had already done the chapter menu so all I had to do was select a menu theme. I also wanted to add some photos which iDVD took care of in no time. Within about 20 minutes my DVD was authored. Now to burn it.
Before burning the DVD, I went through the preview mode just to check out if everything was OK. Everything seemed to check out fine, so I hit the burn button. About an hour later, the DVD was ready. I put it into my DVD player with anticipation, ready to see the fruits of my labor. The menu came up just as I had designed it. I went to the photo gallery first, it worked very well. Then it was time to see the main feature. I selected it from the menu, and it began to play. Success! But wait, what’s this? Why is there no sound? I checked the preview in iDVD one more time. There was audio in the preview, so why was there no audio on the DVD?
I was baffled, this made no sense. Against my better judgment, I tried burning another DVD. Still no audio. Now I was beginning to panic; I didn’t have much time to be dealing with an error like this, just a couple of days before Christmas. In lieu of burning and wasting more DVD’s I decided to try creating images. I tried everything I could think of, including scouring the Apple’s support knowledge base for potential solutions. I did find one or two solutions, but image after image exhibited the same problem. Finally, late on Christmas Eve, I admitted defeat. My PowerBook’s hard drive was filled with a growing pile of non-working DVD images (each one taking at least an hour to render) and I was still no closer to solving the problem of no audio during the main feature.
The next day, dejected, and still with no working DVD, I was forced to give them just the photo book. They had to lug around a large PowerBook to see the video that I had made for them. To this date, I still do not have a working DVD of the video I spent so much time making. My next tactic is to go to the Apple Store and ask one of the geniuses there for help. Suffice to say I was in a huge funk over the Christmas break, because the present I had worked so hard to make didn’t work.
Now, whenever I see one of those Apple commercials, I feel like reaching into the screen and strangling Justin Long. “Macs are great for podcasts and photo books and videos.” Yeah right, whatever you say there, pal.
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| UnnDunn | comments | views |
thinkback
I’m wondering why you didn’t use your camera’s USB or firewire output to capture the video.
The DVD is just a storage means, but it isn’t the best thing to use to grab video off of directly. I have no problems using my camera as a player. In fact iMove does a great job connecting to most cameras and automatically grabbing the video. When it does this it keeps all the different video segments as different clips automatically.
Using your camera vs using your mac to read the disk would be a lot easier.
Did you ever think to do a quick 2 minute project as a tutorial/learning aid (with shorter render times), and not make something you considered “mission critical” the first time out? Not enough time? Then you bit off more than you could reasonably deliver. Apple makes things easy but not so easy no work is required. Did you think to burn a separate photo and video DVD as a way of shaking out the error. You didn’t have to put everything on one.
Also, you make no mention what app you used to burn the discs, what app was used to view the DVD, what stand-alone DVD player you might have tried as an alternative to using the computer, etc. I would also be interested in knowing what the $100 of software you purchased might be. I’m sure there was a more friendly way of getting the video in. And what format is that camera mini-DVD that OSX cannot read it? You could also have blogged your project as you were doing it, and asked any helpful Mac users to help troubleshoot.
One of the best things about the Mac is the wonderful Mac community. When I search the web, I usually find answers to my problems in minutes.
When I can’t find the answer, I post my problem and receive an answer within 24 hours.
Try it next time; you’ll like it.
Why not try a smaller project to start ? Most people are happy to see the people they love in simple photos or video. Advanced post production techniques don’t impress as much as most of us think. Don’t blame Apple for your inexperiance and poor judgement.
Many video cameras that record directly to DVDs do not have a firewire export—this is a problem with the camera (even though they are more expensive than DV models), not iMovie or Apple.
I also think it was a little bizarre to bring video into GarageBand rather than the other way around. I’ve never heard of that method before.
It’s a little harsh blaming Apple for ruining someone’s Christmas. Believe me, they “made” many, many, many more Christmases for people.
I’m sure there are a lot of things I could have done differently. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say.
I used GarageBand because when you click Share -> Export to GarageBand in iMovie, it specifically tells you that you can use GarageBand to score your movie. It seemed obvious to me, and it worked as advertised.
The camera used some sort of wierd DVD format (which is used mainly with set-top DVD recorders, apparently). I hooked up the camera using USB, and it showed up as a volume on the desktop with files that resembled those you’d find on a DVD movie disc. But I couldn’t copy the files off the disc, and iMovie would only import the first clip, and only then with no audio (there were more than 40 clips on the disc.)
I had to buy software called ReadDVD in order to be able to copy the files off the disc, the QuickTime MPEG2 component in order to edit MPEG2 video in iMovie, and one other piece of software whose name escapes me to convert the video to a format iMovie likes.
This is all non-obvious to someone who just bought a camcorder and wants to be able to do all the things Apple talks about in their ads. It took a night of Google searching to find out that I needed those applications in the first place.
As far as trying different workflows and approaches, if you can name it, I tried it (short of scrapping the whole thing and starting from scratch, of course.) I tried exporting the soundtrack from GarageBand, bringing it into iMovie and exporting it to iDVD from there. I tried exporting the movie to a QuickTime file and pulling that file in using iDVD. I couldn’t export it back to the camera because you need a miniDV camera to do that. I tried different encoding settings in iDVD. In all cases, the iDVD preview would have sound, but the final DVD image would not.
I played the first couple of DVDs in Apple DVD player, my Xbox 360, my standalone el-cheapo DVD player, my uncle’s Sony DVD player and a portable DVD player my friend had laying around. Same problem in all of them. After that, I didn’t burn any more DVDs, I just stuck to making images and testing them in Apple DVD player.
I checked the Apple message boards, and I came across a solution that involved exporting the video back to the camcorder in 16-bit mode, but as I mentioned, you need a miniDV camera to do that.
I really don’t know what else I can do at this point.
| UnnDunn | Jan. 04, 2007 | |
| 9:47 am |
I should mention that the main problem I have with this whole experience is that essentially, iDVD lied to me. The Preview mode had full audio leading me to believe that everything worked just fine. It is Apple’s fault for building a Preview feature that doesn’t accurately reflect what you are going to get in the end.
| UnnDunn | Jan. 04, 2007 | |
| 10:15 am |
Can you export back from GarageBand to iMovie, and then from iMovie to iDVD? Does that help?
Every other ‘not playing sound’ problem I’ve had with Macs came down to the sample rate settings in the Mac sound options. I too would say that this isn’t the sort of thing that counts as ‘it just works’.
ProCare $99
If you don’t know how to do something, you can either learn how to do it by trial and error, or you can have someone teach it to you.
You had an atypical scenario, your camera used an incompatible file storage and encoding system.
You used “default” application settings and Apple Store workshop info. Did you ASK how to do what you wanted to do at the workshop? Was it the iMovie workshop or GarageBand?
Furthermore, did you relish the ease of creating the Photobook? Because that process apparently went smoothly.
My advice, get ProCare for $99 and use all 52 of the one-on-one training sessions with a Creative at the Apple Store and let the geniuses deal with people who have technical problems, not people who need software training.
Did you try article #303550 in the Knowledge Base? It seems to describe your situation… if not, its certainly something to try. But I guess you did try it…
I have to agree with UnnDunn...regardless of the cause of the problem the fact that iDVD previewed the movie correctly with sound is the core of the issue.
Did you check iDVD Help? There is an article with solutions specifically about no audio on the burned DVD wven when the preview has it.
This post reminds me of my college roommate who was saving a file on my old Apple IIe with his finger on the power button ready to shut it off when it was done saving. It was the computers fault when he twitched and killed his paper by accident.
Jim,
If you read the article, you would see that the author was aware of that article, but to no avail.
| Nick | Jan. 04, 2007 | |
| 1:08 pm |
RTFM
Undunn, iMovie is a DV editing application. Your video camera is not DV.
You would have the same issue on Windows with a DV-only application. That is why those MPEG2 DVD camcorders come with their own video editing software.
And your comment about how the preview worked so it’s Apple’s fault is about as logical as me saying my Web site should look perfect in IE since I previewed it in Dreamweaver/GoLive and it looked perfect.
Suffice to say, you are using iLife with a camera that isn’t supported. Don’t be surprised if it doesn’t work perfectly with unsupported footage.
iMovie supported formats:
DV
DV Widescreen
HDV 1080i (25 and 30 fps)
HDV 720p (25 and 30 fps)
MPEG 4 Simple Profile
iSight
| Jan. 04, 2007 | ||
| 2:39 pm |
I believe the excellent program Handbrake (free) would have solved your problems getting the video on your mac.
We can sit here and come up with a billion excuses but the truth of the matter, the problem isn’t with the Apple software. It works exactly as advertised and is very easy to use PROVIDED you know what you’re doing. I think the big mistake is trying to learn everything for the first time in such a tight deadline and then expecting a miracle. I’m sure whatever caused the sound not to come up on the DVD is a silly thing but stress and panic will certainly not help find the solution.
sorry, but it sounds like you waited to check your final output until there was no time to correct any errors. if you had weeks to prepare the dvd and managed your time poorly. yes, the problem you encountered was frustrating, no doubt, but your blog is not only overdramatic, it shows poor judgement. you waited to do everything until the last minute and paid the price for it.
There are many helpful suggestions on this page, but the comments from rjscwharz and Mac Fan and Jarod are out of line.
iDVD had the sound and the video in place and could show it on a preview. There is no reason it should not have been able to burn it properly to a DVD. This IS a software issue. If MS Word showed a print preview with 3 paragraphs and a picture, but only printed the picture, wouldn’t that be a software issue (neglecting empty ink cartridges of course).
RJ, there is no point at tossing an insult at a Mac user who is stating a legitimate complaint.
Mac Fan, if the video was “incompatible” with iMovie he wouldn’t have been able to edit and play it. The problem seems to be in iDVD not iMovie.
One more cheap suggestion. Presuming you have the iMovie file, try exporting to a Quicktime movie, then importing this, or a small portion of it) into iDVD. (Forget the music soundtrack for now ... this is an experiment.) Check the Quicktime movie for sound, check the preview in iDVD, Burn the DVD and check the sound again, playing it both in the computer, and in an external DVD player. Now, if the QT movie and iDVD preview have sound but the burned DVD doesn’t in 2 different players, then the problem has nothing to do with your camera and its video format. It is either an obscure iDVD setting, or a DVD burner error, IMHO. Good luck. steve
By the way, my first iDVD project was a friend’s wedding. One hour of video, a little added soundtrack (though I added it within iMovie), export to iDVD, add pics, burn, and it WORKED. Despite the camera oddities UnnDunn had to cleverly work around, and the editing within Garageband (which Apple seems to encourage), my process and UnDunn was pretty much the same. It should have worked! Keep plugging at it, there IS a solution.
Very sorry for your unfortunate experience. My first thought is you used music that you purchased from iTunes, which locks it to play only on authorized computers. Hence, DVD players will not be playing anything.
Sorry you had troubles. It was risky to run down to the last moment with no room for error while attempting to use new tools for the first time. Even if things were working perfectly any number of ordinary errors could have cropped up to sabotage your efforts. It is unpleasant when you don’t have the results you want. We did a large project with similar results. Everything looked fine but the DVDs didn’t play well. It turns out we were using cheap, off-brand discs. When we switched to name brand disks they worked fine. I agree, in a perfect world iDVD preview should indicate problems if there are any. When you figure out what happened you should use the feedback option to tell Apple what happened so they can fix it. I suspect the problem will be related to the use of an unsupported camera.
You can go to
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
and choose the applications for which you wish to leave feedback.
Your Uncle’s granddaughter is your first cousin once removed.
However, back on topic, I made a movie for my mother’s 80th birthday using iMove then using iDVD to create the DVD, I included a track from iTunes, burned it and it worked fine so I think Pecos Bill’s suggestion may not be correct.
1.
Cuppla things. I would never have engaged Garageband to do what you did. I would have imported Garageband output into iMovie - not the other way around as you’ve done it.
I’m wondering too if you ticked the boxes next to the soundtracks in iMovie (as well as the main movie track) to make sure that all sounds were exported.
My preference in iMovie would be to use it to export to iDVD, not Garageband. The alternative would have been to export your completed iMovie into your DVD-camera and create the DVD from there if all else failed, as it did. Live and learn.