How can I import stereo sound in iMovie 10.2.5?

Hi,

iMovie will not display two audio tracks for a clip.

Start by going to Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup/Output/Configure Speakers. Click on the Configure Speakers button.

In the screen that pops up, Configure your speakers to Stereo and then test the speakers for

connectivity.

Now see if your clip will play in stereo.

-- Rich

Screen recording doesn't include the audio, as you found. You'd have to pick up the audio output separately - Audio Hijack would be the best way.

More to the point, you could play the original video and use Audio Hijack to record the audio. Then:

1. Carry out any work on the audio.
2. Load the video into iMovie
3. Separate the audio as I described above
4. Delete the audio track
5. Import the Audio Hijack recording

No guarantees it will work properly. I've had problems with sync wandering when doing a slightly different process.

If you import a clip with a soundtrack, you can select the clip and hit option-command-B to separate the audio into a separate track which you can move, adjust the volume, or edit. If the track is stereo it will play in stereo but will only show as one track,so you can't for example adjust the left-right balance. iMovie is a simplified app intended to let you make movies easily: it is fairly powerful but if you want to do more complicated actions you will need a more sophisticated application such as FCP.

Yes, you are correct. I was thinking that the system setting might be picked up with a screen recording, if the screen recording records what is actually playing. So, the hope was that one could screen record with the left setting, and then another with the right side setting and end up with seperate left and right audio channels on the desk top that could be imported into iMovie and manipulated seperately. This assumes that iMovie initially was doing the stereo split on playback of the merged tracks.However, in limited testing I could not seem to get it to work. I suppose it might work if recorded acoustically with a mic, but there would be a significant loss in quality.

In the last analysis, I think that an app would need to be used that can do stereo track editing.

— Rich

Screen recording does record the audio. I do it all the time. I assume you mean that it doesn’t include changes made through the System sound preferences, that is a device playback modifier, not a file modifier, as you have pointed out.

Not familiar with Audio Hijack. I’ll have to look into it. Thanks for posting that.

— Rich

Rich839 wrote:

Screen recording does record the audio.

Interesting - I just tried it again; even though I found an option to record from sound source I could only record from the microphone, not the sound playing through by USB output - and no ordinary headphone output selectable. (Catalina.)

Hmmmm. I use the Command-Shift-5 feature, that reveals a control box at the bottom of the screen, and I select Built in Microphone from the options list. I plug in ear pods into the mic jack and then start the screen recording. I have found that unless I plug in ear pods the sound records very tinny. The sound does record fine, however, for any movie playing on the screen, including videos on the internet.

-- Rich

To cover the bases, there is a balance slider in System Preferences/Sound.

-- Rich

That's for the output to the local or external speakers. It's not going to affect a file.

I see. That's a considerable fiddle, of course. You'd find Audio Hijack a definite improvement.

The Audio Hijack app is something that I will look into.

-- Rich