I don't know that it is a Youtube problem. I think it is an iMovie problem actually. If I take a video with my PC and a Logitech quickcam, I can upload it straight to YouTube without an issue.

I was about to post this message when Safari oddly crashed. I had retyped it again.

Anyway, I doubt it's a iMovie problem, as I made a test movie about a month ago with iMovie and uploaded it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEdj2YNi4oo

I took a look at the source file. There is definitely audio, but there is also this odd high-pitched noise with it. I managed to convert it to mono, but had a hard time doing that for some reason. Whenever I tried, it would result in only the high-pitched noise remaining. I tried filtering it out with a low pass filter, which kind of helped.

The sound files below are in mono, but it shouldn't matter much, the video wasn't really stereo to begin with.

Just for practice, I also tried making a warmer 'enhanced' version of the song, which removed some echoey background noise and harsh spikes that the mic might have made. Tell me how you think it came out.

You can add this to your video by muting your video's sound and adding the new music instead.

Regular Mono

Mono enhanced


I tried re-encoding the video with the new music. I added a simple fade in and fade out to it. It lost a bit of quality, because it was already encoded before. (think of making a photocopy of a photocopied paper: it gets worse each time)

I'm currently uploading it to YouTube now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0E4zJM2eOM
It works!
I think that high-pitched tone was messing with YouTube or something. Who knows? I'll remove my copy from YouTube as soon as you put yours up. Just tell me when.

Thanks so much for the help! I have about 5 videos to do so can you tell me the steps you went through when getting rid of that high pitched sound so I can do it with the rest of my videos?

What settings did you use when exporting to Youtube? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

It's kind of a complicated process.

I used AudioHijack Pro. It's a handy tool to take audio from any program and record and add effects to it in real time. I recorded the music from the video by "hijacking" QuickTime Player, added a few filters and effects, saved it as an Apple Lossless file, converted it to high-quality MP3 (so I could easily upload it on the internet), and got those files as a result.

You can use the demo version to make recordings up to 10 mins long (after that it adds static noise to the sound), or pay $32 to unlock the full version.

AHP already comes bundled with a bunch of audio plugins, but I used a custom LADSPA audio filter written by some guy named Steve Harris. You can download a large bundle of effects (including the one I used) here: http://ardour.org/files/releases/swh-plugins-0.4.15.dmg

While some of the effects are pretty cool (DJ flanger, pan, karaoke), I have no clue what many of the other obscurely named ones do (SC2, AM frequency transmuter [or whatever it's named]).

After installing them, they should be available in AudioHijack's effects panel. If not, be sure to restart AudioHijack and try again.

Telling you the numbers for every option of every effect in each preset would take a while to explain, so I exported the presets, placed them in a zip file, and uploaded it online. Download the file below, unzip it, and then just follow the screenshot to import the preset. The "mono" uses a workaround to force the audio to mono, and the "enhancer" is the one I used to try and enhance your song:
http://bigpixel.macintoshdevelopers....ahppresets.zip

in Audio Hijack:
http://i19.tinypic.com/4xl0o5s.png
and select the preset file.


I used iMovie '06 (free download for '08 users), but '08 should give the same encoding results.

You can use the CD-ROM preset, which is already pretty good, or try going "Expert" or whatever it's called, and select to export as a Quicktime Movie, and match up these settings:
http://i3.tinypic.com/4trlh21.png
(increasing the bitrate will make the quality better, but will also make the file size bigger. Something in the range of 512-1024 is good for online streaming)

As for size, I'm pretty sure that YouTube downsizes everything to 320x240 and then scales it up again to fix the player box, so you that's what you should select for the size.
http://i5.tinypic.com/66xn038.png

Here's the audio. Have QuickTime automatically choose the "Recommended" sample rate. Because the audio is mono, select AAC, and select Mono. A good choice for bitrate here is 64kbps. If the audio is in stereo, select 128kbps. Higher bitrates give better quality audio, but 64kbps mono/128kbps stereo is a good choice for most uses. Despite what people might say, AAC has a higher quality than MP3's with the same bitrate.
http://i14.tinypic.com/4pewav6.png

Then upload your new video to YouTube!

That's awesome help! I was able to create an MP3 using Quicktime and the hijack program but I have no idea what I'm doing. The problem is that once I've made my mp3, I go into iMovie and try to "sync" it up but it just doesn't work. I can't get the audio lined up with the video at all. Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

When you use the hijack program, do you usually click "Hijack" and "Record" and THEN start the video playing or the other way around? What's the easiest way for me to make it so that it syncs up perfectly? I don't want this looking like a kung fu movie :)

With the Hijack program, you can actually take audio directly from iMovie.

There's an option somewhere to remove silence parts longer than 'x-amount' of seconds, which will keep removing the silent parts until something starts playing. I think it's in the "Recording" tab. I'm not sure how to describe it. I think

Also, I'm not sure how to line up audio in iMovie '08. I only have '06, because '08 doesn't work on my old Mac G4. Sorry.

This is unreal. I just followed your instructions with iMovie 08 and this is the **** I get. http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ueo-usRt99I

Thanks so much for trying but I think this is now a lost cause.