JimInAlabama - Posted - 11/06/2015:  15:26:44

I need to record some simple video clips with my iPhone.  It does ok on video but my Zoom H2n gets better audio.  Can anyone recommend an easy-to-use Mac software that will allow me to merge the Zoom audio with the iPhone video? 

banjoferg - Posted - 11/06/2015:  17:07:10

You can use iMovie for this. I do it all the time with my iphone, gopro, and zoom h1. 

mdthib - Posted - 11/07/2015:  06:15:28

Yes, iMovie does this nicely. Just make sure you mute the audio from the iPhone. You don't want both audio streams, you just want the superior one. Also, sometimes videos record audio at 48kHz—if you find your video are aligned but go out of synch over time, that's the culprit and you can Google how to change the sample rate. I find it very rarely does happen, and it's just something to keep an ear open for.  

Bill - Posted - 11/07/2015:  09:14:28

Michael and Matt have left some valuable advice here, but somehow it doesn't work for me.  I use a Zoom H2 if I want good audio for my video tracks.  In every permutation that I have tried, iMovie allows the audio and video to go out of sync over time.  The effect is relatively small, and perhaps I am overcritical, but it is quite noticeable and objectionable to me by the end of a 3-minute video.  This is especially true for a video where I want to show someone how my fingering works as I play - near the end of a piece, for example, a hammered-on note plays noticeably before my finger hammers-on in the video.  

Here are some of the audio recording permutations I have tried:

.wav zoom at 44.1 kHz, both 16 and 24 bit

.wav zoom at 48 kHz, both 16 and 24 bit

.mp3 zoom at 48, 56, 64, 96 and 128 kbps



​I have tried these to mate with video from 2 iphones (5 and 6+), and with the video camera in 2 different macbook pro computers. 



I have also tried this interesting experiment:

Record a video with the iphone and import that video to the computer hard drive.  Open the video with Quicktime and export the audio from it to the hard drive.  Now you have 2 files, the original video and the separated audio.  Import both the video from the camera and the audio file from quicktime into iMove and mate them together.  They will go out-of-sync, even though the 2 files were recorded in sync together on the iphone.



So, when I want to mate my iphone video with zoom audio, I use this procedure, which always works flawlessly to keep the audio and video tracks in sync.

Import the video and audio files into Garageband (also free on the Mac).  Align the iphone and zoom audio tracks there.  Delete the iphone audio track and use the menu command "export audio to movie".  Remember, this is all done with Garageband.



The exported movie file will stay in sync all the way to the end.  



Now, Garageband won't edit the video, so I then import that file into iMovie and do subsequent video editing there.  The audio will stay in sync.



Surprisingly, this only takes an extra couple of minutes, once you learn how to do it and practice a few times.  The results are guaranteed.

Edited by - Bill on 11/07/2015 09:19:01

Bob Miller - Posted - 11/11/2015:  03:45:36

You might be interested in the Zoom IQ7.   I just got one but I don’t have any sample videos.

sweetwater.com/store/detail/IQ...QodTeILew

Bob Miller       

"If this ain't bluegrass, grits ain't groceries"