Audio

Importing Audio
Working with Audio

Importing Audio

Audio can be added to your iMovie project by using the Music and Sound Effects Browser or by extracting it from another iMovie clip.

Import Audio from the Music and Sound Effects Browser

To access the Music and Sound Effects Browser, click on the MUSIC NOTE icon on the taskbar. You will see a bunch of different folders in here.

iMovie (and iLife for that matter) comes with a whole slew of royalty-free music and sound effects. You can find these in the iMovie '08 Sound Effects and the iLife Sound Effects folders.

If you create tracks in Garage Band, these will be in the Garage Band folder.

To access your iTunes library, simply select the iTunes folder. You need to make sure that any outside music that you want to use in your movie is in iTunes (or GarageBand) in order to use it in your project.

To preview a track, highlight it and then click on the play button at the bottom of the Music and Sound Effects Browser.

Audio can be added to your project in two ways, pinned to a specific clip or as a background track.

When an audio track is pinned to a specific clip, it starts playing when the player reaches that clip in the movie. The audio track moves around as you move the corresponding clip around your Storyboard. To add an audio file to a specific clip, drag the track to the exact frame where you want the audio to start (using the red line as a guide). It will show up as a green stripe below the filmstrip, with a pointer indicating the starting position. You can stack sound files by dragging another one to the same spot. It will show up as another green stripe. You can stack as many audio files as you want.

A background track means that the audio will play from the beginning until it is finished or until the end of your movie (whichever is first) and will not change no matter how you move the clips around. To add a background track to a movie, drag an audio file from the Music and Sound Effects Browser to the background area of the Storyboard (it will turn green). Background tracks show up as a green bubble behind the filmstrips in your Storyboard.

Import Audio from Another iMovie Clip

Even though you can no longer view the audio files in the same way that you could in iMovie HD, it is still possible to extract audio from movie clips in either the Event or Project Libraries.

1. Select the section of the filmstrip that you want to extract the audio from
2. Hold down CMD (⌘) and Shift and drag the selection onto the Storyboard

Working with Audio

You can move an audio file that is attached to a track by clicking on it to select it (it will become highlighted with yellow) and then using the hand to drag it to the desired position.

You can trim the end off of an audio file by selecting it and then mousing over the end of it until the cursor turns into a double arrow. Click and drag the end of the audio strip to cut off the end.

For more fine-tune adjustments, select an audio track, right click and select Trim… from the menu. A trim window will come up just like when trimming video. However, instead of thumbnails, you'll see the audio sound wave. Work with it in the same way that you would when trimming video.

Audio Adjustments

To adjust audio in iMovie '08, select the audio file or the corresponding filmstrip and click the adjust audio button on the toolbar (it looks like the SPEAKERS icon with a sound wave coming out of it).

There are three main sections that you will probably work with.

1. Volume – you can adjust the volume of the clip by sliding this bar back and forth.

2. Ducking – Ducking is actually pretty cool. When you have stacked audio, checking this box tells iMovie which audio you want played over all the other audio. It will automatically reduce the volume of all other stacked audio tracks by the percent on the slider. To adjust how quiet the other tracks are, simple change the percentage with the slider.

3. Fade – These controls let you fade in or out the audio track. Click Manual and then use the slider to select how long the fade in or out takes.

Normalizing Clip Volume comes in handy when the audio of your clip was recorded at different levels. Clicking it automatically adjusts the volume of the clip so that it is at about the same level as the surrounding clips.

When you are finished making your audio adjustments, click Done.

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