iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Volume Adjustments

Ah, yes: volume adjustments…one of the most controversial aspects of iMovie '08 and '09.

It's true: There's no "rubber-banding" in iMovie '09, no little graph that represents the way a clip's volume rises and falls over its length, no way to make the music get softer at a point you select. The following pages provide instructions and workarounds.

Adjusting Overall Clip Volume

You should know from the start that you can't make manual changes to a clip's volume level along its length. You can, however, make the entire song louder or softer, raising or lowering all of its peaks and valleys simultaneously.

To do that, double-click the clip. It can be any kind of audio: a background audio bubble, a purple narration stripe, or a green sound-effect stripe. In fact, you can even click a video clip, with the understanding that you're about to adjust the camcorder audio's volume.

Tip

The clip can even be one that's still in your Event Browser, not even placed in a project yet. In that case, the audio changes you're about to make will affect that video selection in every project from now on.

The Inspector window appears. Click the Audio button (shown in Figure 9-14), or just press the letter A when your clip is selected. Immediately, the Audio Adjustments dialog box appears.

Note

Whenever you adjust the volume of a video clip, a tiny, faint logo appears in the top-left corner as a ...