in this video I'm going to show you how
to solve a common problem when recording
your microphone using QuickTime Player
on the Mac and that problem is your
microphone sound only coming out of the
left speaker hey it's Mike with more
tips and tutorials to help you create
great video for your YouTube channel
your video marketing or online courses
thank you so much for being here
QuickTime Player on the Mac is a simple
versatile and free media creation tool
but it has a few limitations you'll
quickly run into one of these
limitations when you try to record audio
using an XLR microphone like this rode
nt1-a connected to a USB audio device
like this focusrite scarlett solo as you
can hear my voice is only coming out of
the left speaker
that's because USB interfaces like the
scarlett solo split the incoming audio
signal typically the XLR or microphone
input goes to channel 1 the left channel
in a stereo pair and the instrument
input goes to channel to the right
channel so your microphone signal sits
on the left channel and that's how
quicktime player records it to remedy
this microphone on the left side only
issue we need to switch the microphone
input track from stereo left side only
to mono which will place your microphone
sound on both the left and right
channels so it comes out of both left
and right speakers unfortunately you
can't do that in QuickTime Player you
can't switch the microphone track input
from stereo to mono like you can another
audio software quicktime player is
stereo only which is why the microphone
signal from your USB interface plays
only through the left speaker in the
quicktime player recording there's a
simple solution to this problem and that
solution is GarageBand that digital
music studio that comes bundled with
every Mac at least at the time of this
recording I'm going to show you how to
use GarageBand to convert our stereo or
left side only QuickTime recording into
a mono recording so that the microphone
sound comes out of both speakers let's
jump into it
so here we are in GarageBand this is
version ten point three point two
running on Mac OS Mojave ten point
fourteen point three for your reference
when you open GarageBand you get this
choose a project dialog window I'm just
gonna double click empty project the
GarageBand editing interface opens up
into an empty project and it asks us to
create a track I'm just gonna double
click on this microphone button to
create a microphone track it doesn't
really matter because we're not gonna
use this track and here's the editing
interface in GarageBand with the one
microphone track we created now before
we go any further I'm just gonna go up
here and click on this purple button
with the metronome icon to deselect it
if it's selected you get a clicking
sound when you play your track great for
timing music but distracting for our
purposes so I'll just click it to
deselect it and now I'm gonna bring in a
recording I want to convert from stereo
left side only microphone sound to mono
or both sides sound I know really
scientific to do that you go to file
movie open movie yes you can actually
open videos or movies in GarageBand the
finder opens and you can navigate to the
location of your movie mine is on the
desktop so I'll just select it and click
open and this big video window opens in
the GarageBand interface I'm just gonna
size this down so we can see what's
going on now this video window is a
preview window and it's connected to
these two new tracks up here
in the timeline this top track is the
video track of our movie you can tell
that by these frames from the video here
below that is the audio track from our
video I'll hit the spacebar to play so
you can see how these are connected so
you can see the video in the preview
window plays along in sync with the two
tracks up here this is a great setup for
building music and sound effect tracks
to create a really sophisticated
soundtrack for your video but that's
another tutorial I'm gonna go back and
play this video again now listen
carefully
the sound from my microphone is coming
out of the left speaker only and if you
recall it's because I recorded this
video in QuickTime Player using an XLR
microphone connected to a USB audio
interface which was connected to my Mac
to fix this and make the microphone
sound come out of both left and right
speakers I'm gonna go down to this track
Settings panel to this input setting now
ignore this setting on the right here
it's just selects your input what we
care about is this button here with the
overlapping rings icon the overlapping
rings mean stereo if we click this
button we get a single ring which means
you guessed it mono which is what we
want with this now set to Mono let's
have a listen to the audio track of our
video I'll hit the spacebar to play
and now our audio is playing out of both
the left and right speakers
right the final step in the process is
to replace the old stereo left side only
audio track in our video with this new
mono or both sides audio track we just
set to do that I'm going to go back up
to file movie and you'll see we have a
new choice export audio to movie we
select that and we get this export
dialogue and you'll see it says location
and name of new movie and that's because
GarageBand is going to take our existing
video that we imported and the new mono
audio track we made and combine them
into a new movie file let's quickly run
through these settings save as so this
is the file name of the movie I imported
into GarageBand now if I leave this as
is GarageBand will replace my old video
file with the new video file it
generates now I don't recommend you do
that I recommend creating a new file
instead just in case something goes
wrong and you need to go back to the old
video file so I'll just add underscore
mono to create a new file you can put in
whatever you want there for where or the
location where you want to export the
new file to I'll just leave it set to
the desktop and finally we have preset
now remember GarageBand is creating a
new video file for us so if I leave this
preset at SD which stands for standard
definition 480p GarageBand will generate
an SD 480p video file with my new mono
audio track now that's not what I want
so I'm just gonna hit this drop down to
see if there are any other choices as
you can see we have a few now these
export presets are fairly
self-explanatory
nine times out of ten I'm going to
choose full quality because I like to
preserve as much quality as possible in
my video file before I have to compress
it for uploading so I'm going to select
full quality and then hit save and
GarageBand will take the new mono audio
track and combine it with my original
video to create a new video file
so let's see and hear how things worked
out I'll open the file exported by
GarageBand play it
and there's the new video file with the
microphone sound coming out of both
speakers
using GarageBand to convert your
QuickTime Player audio from stereo to
mono is fairly straightforward but it
can be a bit tedious if you have a lot
of videos you need to convert now there
is a more streamlined conversion method
but it involves the use of an additional
application which is free and some
coding in the terminal application on
your Mac if you're interested in
learning this method let me know in the
comments below well that's it for this
video I hope you found value in it and
if you're looking for more tips and
tutorials for creating video then have a
look at the other videos on my channel
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thanks for watching and I'll see you
next time