Video Latency Issue On The Mac Book Pro 2.4 With Leopard 10.5.5

Question

Gear: Macbook Pro (early 2008 model) - 2.4gigs cpu 2gigs ram - all the latest updates... no other applications running during the test
Hi folks. Currently I am having a latency issue when trying to record directly into iMovie using the built-in microphone and iSight camera. Basically, the video seems 5 - 7 frames late to the audio. I found that a good way to demonstrate this issue was simply doing a few handclaps as a test.
This is a quick handclap test displaying some video latency during recording with the iSight camera in iMovie 08.
- Just download this link — and import it into iMovie 08 - Here is a link to a zip file that you can import into iMovie 08 - It's 2.5meg - .m4v export - Also it was recorded as standard format and audio midi setup app: audio was set to 44.1:
http://www.brainbeast.com/37/clap-1-large.zip
- Play from beginning. As soon as you hear a clap sound — pause with the space bar - then back up before the clap with the left arrows
- Then click the right arrow several times until you hear the beginning of the clap sound ( This is the audio: start frame)
- Now — you will notice the video still has an open hand. At this point click the right arrow, counting as you go several times until you see the hand close. This is the amount of frames that the video is late to the audio. For me it seems to be an average of about 5-7 frames late.
Unfortunately iMovie 06 nor QuickTime will not scrub audio as you go frame by frame with the arrow keys so you cannot test it there. If you have some other application such as final cut Pro, you could test it with that.
! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO PERFORM THE TEST YOURSELF:
- Just record a new movie in iMovie 08 - using the built-in mic and i-Sight camera — and see if it is also slightly out of sync
Note: to be as fair as possible — I did a slow handclap ( in order to not challenge the frame rates) - also, in order to get the maximum volume I used an open palm ( clap on the palms with your fingers spread out as you can see I did.)
Please let me know if this latency appears to be the same for you as it does for me.
Q: Is it just my machine or does it happen to you too?
Q: Does anyone know a way around this latency issue?
Q: Does anyone know if Apple is aware of this latency issue?

Answer 1

I am experiencing the same incredibly frustrating problem as well. When I record directly into iMovie
'08, the video lags the audio by a fraction of a second.
I have tried shutting down all other applications and having only iMovie up. Same problem.
I tried recording the video into QuickTime instead of iMovie and experienced the same problem. (Which makes me think it is perhaps a hardware or operating system issue.)
I tried the technique suggested here and on other sites of "double-dragging" the clip from the Events pane into a project (one normal drag and one Shift+Cmd drag) so that I had the audio and video as two separate tracks. After muting the audio on the video track, I then attempted to slide the audio over to sync it with the video, but even down at the 1/2 second zoom setting I didn't seem to have enough granularity to move the audio so that it was exactly in sync with the video. I was wishing I could use the arrow keys or something like that to move the audio just one frame at a time.
All I want to do is record a video directly into iMovie '08 - this would seem to be something trivial to do!