Logic Pro 8 Logic and iMovie audio?

[pfloyd714714]

I'm a teacher and wish to make a film for my students. The audio functionality in iMovie 09 is atrocious. In David Pogue's "iMovie '09" manual, he suggests using GarageBand for audio editing. I don't know squat about GarageBand, but I've used Logic for a few years (since version 6). I've never used it to work with video, however.

I gather from the Logic reference manual that if I import the edited movie from iMovie, I can also import the audio from that footage. From there I can add narration, music, sound effects, etc. on separate tracks.

My question, though, is what do I do after all sound editing, and the film itself, is finished? GarageBand has options including "Export to Disk" which creates a QuickTime movie file. It also includes a "Share" menu for sending the movie to iDVD, which is what I'll want to do. Does Logic have a similarly simple function? This isn't Hollywood--it's a middle school history class. (Sorry for any glazed eyes and shores that mental image may have caused.)

Jim

 

[zerobeat]

I bounce the audio to a WAV file, and then use QuickTime Player to marry the audio with the video. But Apple has recently removed that feature from QuickTime, so I have to stick with Quicktime 7.x. Note that you need QuickTime Pro (which comes with Logic Studio 8 or 9 anyway) to do this. Just make sure the bounce starts at the same timepoint as the movie file.

Logic 9 has a feature that allows to bounce the audio directly into the movie, but I've never used it (since I had been doing it the other way for about 12 years).

 

[georgelegeriii]

Upgrade to Logic 9 if you can, it is better for a number of reasons, the main one being that it does the bounce back to movie perfectly...

A few things to consider:

Make sure you have the correct sample rates so everything stays in sync.. and do that before you import the movie into Logic. Forget GB, it's not very good for this kind of thing.. I've used Logic for this very thing, and it works pretty darn good.

You need to make sure to either import the audio that is in the movie, or mute it... it will mess you up if you don't. importing is the better way I think.

You will have multiple audio tracks in your movie if you use the bounce to movie feature... I suggest opening up your movie in QT Pro and delete the audio that is there after you import it into your new Logic session, so you don't have this problem... that one took my by surprise the first time I did this... I had to disable the original audio to hear my new mix.

Good luck,

 

[sonnykeyes]

When you "Export Audio to Movie" (as I believe it's called in the menu) if the original movie still has an audio track in it, you get a dialogue asking you which tracks you wish to keep in your exported movie. If you have already imported the audio from the movie (your best option, because you can mix everything the way you want it) then clicking away from the text in the box to deselect the audio track then you won't be including it with your final export. If you didn't import the audio from the movie already and are just playing it from the movie window in your Logic project, then leave it selected when you export and it will be mixed with the audio from your Logic project. HTH

 

[Doug Zangar]

I do this stuff a lot creating my tutorial videos and it works fine in Logic 8 and 9 (you don't say what version you're using - can't remember back to Logic 7).

As Sonny mentions, go to the main File menu>Export audio to movie. You'll then get a Sound Settings window (set to taste) and then a save window. After that you get the very counter-intuitive window (IMHO) that asks you to select what audio tracks that came with the movie you'd like to keep. It already pre-selects a track. So as mentioned above, just click in the background of the window to de-select the original audio file so it is not included in the new movie - assuming you've imported the audio from the movie. I agree with Sonny - this is normally the preferred way to work for this type of work.

 

[pfloyd714714]

Thanks to all who replied.

I've worked this little 26-minute movie for a few days and will likely finish up today. This is the first time I've used Logic for voice-over, sound effects, etc. and it's been so much more flexible than, for instance, the sound options in iMovie HD. Hopefully I'll have no further questions after today's work. (And, hopefully, my students will like the thing.)

Thanks again.

Jim