In this video i'm going to show you how to add professional level
audio meters to iMovie so that you can monitor
and control audio levels like you can in more expensive
professional level video editing software like Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro.
So the first thing i'm going to show you
in this tutorial is how to put together an inexpensive professional-level
audio meter setup for iMovie using a $5 US
piece of software from the Mac App Store then after that
I'll show you a FREE audio meter solution for iMovie
Let's jump in. So here we are in iMovie this is version 10.1.14
running on mac OS 10.15.6 for your reference
And I have this project in the timeline that has audio. As you can see from these
waveforms. If you're not seeing audio waveforms in
your project go over and select the Settings button on the far right of the
interface then make sure Audio, Show waveforms is checked.
I'll play the project a little bit
and you can hear the audio but as you can see iMovie doesn't have
audio meters the only way to measure the level of
your audio is by looking at the audio waveforms
themselves here's how it works: If the waveform is
barely visible your sound is very low, if the waveform
peaks are yellow the level is high, if the peaks are red
the level is too high you've hit the ceiling
the sound is being distorted, an effect known as clipping
not very pleasant to listen to. iMovie's audio waveform system works fine if
you're only working with one or maybe two audio
tracks in your project but things get tricky when you want to
create a more professional level soundtrack that includes
several different types of audio tracks, you know, sync sound from the video clips
voice over, music, sound effects, ambient sound. The sound levels from all
those different audio tracks actually add up and if
you're not careful the sum of those sound levels can get
too high and start overloading the timeline which can lead
to unpleasant audio distortion or clipping
There's really no way to tell if that's happening in your iMovie project without
audio meters. Audio meters visualize the overall sound
level of your project allowing you to avoid distorted audio
while keeping your sound levels strong and consistent
which is why you'll find audio meters on pro level
video editing software like Final Cut Pro
and Premiere Pro. I'm going to add audio meters to my iMovie setup here
so that i can more closely monitor and control my
sound levels like the pros do. To get started i'm going to head over to the
Mac App Store by going up and selecting the
apple icon on the top menu bar and from the menu selecting App Store
The Mac App Store opens and in the search field
up here I'll type in ProLevel
ProLevel is a set of professional-grade audio meters you can use to monitor the
audio levels coming out of your Mac and as you can see ProLevel has been
around for quite some time but it still works fine with macOS Catalina
check the app details below here to see if ProLevel is compatible
with your Mac and OS. Now you purchase and install ProLevel like any other Mac
app. I've already purchased and installed ProLevel which is why the button up
here says Open. So i'll open ProLevel so you can get a
look at it and there's not much to see at the
moment but that will change once we connect it to iMovie and to make
that connection we're going to use a little piece
of free audio software called BlackHole. You can think of BlackHole as a virtual
wire you can use to connect audio
applications to each other. Here's the download page for BlackHole
on github. I'll put a link to this page in the
description. BlackHole is developed by Existential Audio. Now if you scroll down
the page to the easy installation instructions
you'll find a link to download the installer for the plugin
now make note to close all running audio applications before installing BlackHole
I'll click the download link and I'm
brought to a page on the Existential Audio website. Now in
order to download the actual plugin you need to complete this form
with your name and email address then click this subscribe button
and the actual plugin download link will be sent to the email address you put in
the form. So this plugin isn't absolutely free it
costs you an email address. Now it might take a few minutes for the
email to arrive, you may also want to check your spam folder
to see if the email landed there. Once you get the email from Existential Audio
you just click this link right here and you're
brought to a download page on Existential Audio's website where you
can finally download BlackHole by clicking this
button here. This downloads the BlackHole software
package to your machine, then just follow the install
instructions. once BlackHole is installed the next
thing we need to do is open up Audio MIDI Setup on our Mac
So i'll hit command - spacebar to bring up the Spotlight Search interface
then i'll start typing Audio MIDI Setup and there it is highlighted at the top
of the results. I'll hit return and Audio MIDI Setup opens up. You can
also open up Audio MIDI Setup through ProLevel.
With ProLevel active go up to the ProLevel top menu
and under Tools, select Audio MIDI Setup and the Audio MIDI setup interface
opens. Now if you installed BlackHole properly
you should see it here in Audio MIDI Setup in the left panel
with the other audio sources on your Mac. Alright, here in Audio MIDI Setup I'm
going to go down to this little plus button at the bottom
left of the interface select it and from the menu select
Create Multi-output Device a Multi-output Device allows us to
combine different audio outputs together into
one output. I'm going to rename the Multi-output Device to
iMovie Audio Meters. Now this list on the right panel of the
Multi-output Device is where you select the various audio outputs you want to
include in your Multi-output Device I'll first select Built-in Output.
Next I'll select BlackHole 16-channel. So now BlackHole, the virtual audio wire
is connected to my Mac's output. For sample rate you can leave it at 44.1
kilohertz or you can change it to 48 kilohertz
which is the standard sampling rate for digital video
Now if you do change it make sure all the other devices
in your Multi-output Device are using the same sample rate
Also make sure Master Device is set to Built-in Output. Alright,
we're done here in Audio MIDI Setup, so i'll close this window
and now we're ready to connect iMovie to the ProLevel audio meters
So the first thing we need to do is go up and select
the speaker icon in the top menu bar and from the list of available outputs
select the Multi-output Device we just created
iMovie Audio Meters. You can also do this in System Preferences
by going to Sound, selecting the Output button
then from the list of outputs selecting iMovie Audio Meters
The next thing we need to do is connect BlackHole,
think the other end of that virtual audio wire,
to the ProLevel audio meters themselves. To do that I'll first make
sure ProLevel is active by clicking on it
then on my keyboard I'm going to hit command - d
and this little preferences pane pops out of the ProLevel audio meters
From the device setting menu at the top of this window
select BlackHole 16-channel. I'm also going to go down and check
Use Floating Window so that the audio meters stay visible
even when iMovie is the active application, so the ProLevel meters
aren't hidden. Then I'll hit command - d again to close
the preferences pane and you're done! iMovie is connected
to the ProLevel audio meters. I'm going to go ahead and play my iMovie timeline
and you can see the audio from iMovie registering in the ProLevel
audio meters. Now some really quick basics on how to
read these audio meters: you have two columns, the left column is
for the left audio channel and the right column is for the right
audio channel. Now you'll notice there are actually two
meters in each column. This lower outside meter is called an
RMS meter, it measures the average sound
levels being output. RMS meters approximate the way our ears
perceive sounds, they're very much like analog-style
audio meters with the bouncing needle. The higher meters on the inside are what
you really want to pay attention to these are Peak Level Meters, the kind
you'll find in Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro
Peak Level Meters measure sound levels instantaneously, so they catch everything
So generally for online video you want to keep the peak levels of your
audio between the top of the green area, around
minus 6 db and the middle of the yellow area, minus 3 db. Stay away
from the red area! It means your audio level is too hot
which will lead to distorted or clipped sound.
Now if the ProLevel audio meters are out of your price range
or they just seem too complicated there is a simple
and free set of audio meters you can use with iMovie.
You can find those audio meters in Audacity the free, open-source software
for recording and editing audio. I'll leave a link to the Audacity
download page in the description. Once you've downloaded and installed Audacity
just launch the software. On the interface you'll see a row of menus
just below the controls. Now assuming you've already downloaded and installed
BlackHole and set up your Multi-output Device as
described earlier in this tutorial you're going to go under the Input menu
the menu with the microphone and select BlackHole 16-channel
then from the Output menu, the menu with the speaker icon
select your Multi-output Device. The Multi-output Device I created in this
demo is called iMovie Audio Meters
Then you can just resize and rearrange your windows to make the Audacity audio
meters visible while you work in iMovie
Now if you see the Click to Monitor button on the Audacity interface just
click that to activate the audio meters. Play back
your iMovie timeline
and now you can monitor your iMovie audio levels using the audio meters in
the free audio software Audacity. So there's a free
and an inexpensive option for taking your iMovie soundtracks to the next
level, and if you're interested in more ways to
get pro-level results out of your videos using iMovie, have a
look at these other videos on my channel. Thanks for watching and i'll see you
next time.