Why is the sound so terrible in 10.4.6?

Question

After upgrading to OS 10.4.6, there are serious problems in the sound when importing clips from my Sony DCR-TRV 900. The main problem is what someone else described as "digital noise," high-pitched bubbling sounds and distortion, in both singing and instrumental passages. (There is also some video stuttering--a problem which did not exist before the upgrade--but it is the sound quality that is simply intolerable.
I have actually burned a dvd from the entire tape, so it is not just a problem with playback within iMovie. There is plenty of memory, and the sound is equally bad in the same places whether I create an entire one-hour project or a one-minute test project.
I have tried switching all the preference options on and off, changing the settings for quality, even importing directly into the timeline, all to no avail. Turning on the "filter audio" option only makes things worse, as there are sound droupouts. I have upgraded Quicktime to 7.1.1, updated permissions, trashed the preferences for iMovie, etc.
I have used the same camera to make a DVD from the same type of recording a few days ago, and the sound and video are fine in the camera playback, so this is definitely an iMovie problem, and also definitely related to the change from 10.4.5 to 10.4.6.
I note that similar problems are being discussed at length for both iMovie 5 and 6, so an upgrade of iMovie is obviously not the solution.
Apple, please get your act together!

Answer 1

Larry,
What version of iMovie are you using?____
The sound problem may well be due to OS 10.4.6 and/or iMovie 6 (perhaps 5). I have iLife 6, and am having lots of problems with iMovie 6 (see lengthy discussion entitled "Lousy iMovie HD...." in this forum).
I also started out using an external Firewire 400 as well as FW 800 drives for my video files. That's where I first experienced the stuttering audio and video problems in iMovie. Thinking it was the drives' fault (they really should work OK with iMovie), I bought a 300G 7200rpm internal drive and moved my iMovie projects to it (iMovie itself is on my other internal drive -- the system drive, in the Applications folder). Same problem. I'm still getting lousy sound, especially stuttering audio & video. I have discovered, however, by eliminating several extracted audio clips from my movie (i.e. audio clips extracted from their corresponding video clips), that the stuttering ceased and the movie played smoothly in iMovie. I have a strong reason for wanting those extracted audio clips, so this "solution" is not an option for me. I (and several other people) am still waiting for a better solution to this problem.
I only started experincing the poor sound after upgrading to OS 10.4x (and iMovie 6). iTunes works fine. Maybe the problem is in the OS and not iMovie alone. iMovie 6 works fine, up to a point. Seems it can't handle too many extracted audio clips. Otherwise, I like iMovie 6 very much. I have successfully made a couple of very short movies which had no, or very few, extracted audio clips. I bought iMovie 6 so I could edit widescreen (16:9) video as I previously had iMovie 3 on a G4/450 which worked fine, but couldn't do 16:9.
I doubt iLife 6 will solve your problem. But keep us posted if you find a solution!
Frank