iCreate - UK (2020-04)

iMovie

How to record better

quality sound

V

ideo cameras do a great job of capturing colours and

tones, but they’re less good at recording sound. If your

subject is far away from the camera’s built-in mic then

they won’t sound very clear. iMovie has an Auto button designed

to boost weak sound, but it will also boost unwanted ambient

sound such as traffic noise or a passing plane. You could try

using iMovie’s Reduce background noise tool but this can cause

voices to sound flat and distorted. By recording audio onto

your subject’s iPhone you can capture crisp clear sound. You

can then use this iPhone sourced audio track to replace the

poor quality sound recorded by the video camera. By capturing

sound onto iPhones your subjects are free to move about at a

distance from the camera and still sound great.

Shoot and edit to produce better sounding productions

Improve your audio

Record sound separately and sync it with your footage

Combining a standalone mic and iMovie’s built-in sound-

boosting capabilities, you can vastly improve your audio

Sound recording kit

For this project we recorded the

woman’s audio using a Comica SIG

LAV V05 MI Lavalier microphone. This

kit enabled us to adjust her sound

levels using a manual gain control. We

could also monitor her audio quality via

headphones to check for wind noise,

rustle etc. You can pick up this useful

sound kit for £69.99 from Amazon.

Knowledge base

Download

available

10

Time needed

Developer

Apple, Inc

Difficulty

Waveforms

To check that our separate audio tracks

are in sync we need to see their undulating

waveforms in the timeline. Tick this box in the

Project Settings window to ensure that the

waveforms are visible.

Controlpoints

ByholdingtheOptionkeyandclicking

youcanaddcontrolpointsto thevolume

bar.Thisenablesyouto manuallyfade

soundupordownasneeded.

Volume control

The blue waveform for the

video clip and the green

waveforms for the audio

clips have volume control

bars. We’re reduced the

volume for the video clip

to 0% as that has poor

quality sound.

Sound tracks

By recording each subjects’s sound

onto their iPhones we could capture

good quality sound at any distance

from the camcorder. We can then

replace the camcorder’s poor

quality audio with the high-quality

iPhone tracks.