iLife '04: The Missing Manual

Editing Audio Clips

Fortunately, you can do more with your audio clips than just insert them into the Timeline Viewer. You can lengthen them or shorten them, make them fade in or out, shift them to play earlier or later in time, and even superimpose them. Best of all—and here’s one of the most useful features in iMovie—you can make their volume rise and fall over the length of the clip.

Making Whole-Clip Volume Adjustments

To make a particular clip louder or quieter relative to the other tracks, click its representation in the Timeline Viewer to select it. The clip darkens to show that it’s highlighted.

Having selected an audio (or video) clip in this way, you can affect its overall volume level by dragging the volume slider shown in Figure 17-6. You can make it so quiet that it’s absolutely silent, or you can actually make it 50 percent louder than the original.

Here are some pointers in this regard:

• You can also type a percentage number into the text box to the right of the slider. This isn’t a feature only for the obsessively precise; it’s a useful way to make sure that each of several audio clips are boosted to the same degree.

• iMovie stores your Fade checkbox and Volume slider settings independently for every audio clip. That’s why the position of the Volume slider, for example, may jump around as you click different audio clips.

• If even 150 percent isn’t enough of a volume boost, you can always open the audio clip in GarageBand for a quick boost. Drag the clip from the Finder into ...