iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Editing Audio in GarageBand

Why do you suppose the audio-editing features in iMovie '09 are so much weaker than they were in iMovie 6? One possibility is that Apple said to itself, "Well, sheesh—if they want to edit audio, let them use an audio-editing program like the one that comes on the same DVD as iMovie!"

That would be a reference to GarageBand, the music composition program included with iLife. It offers all of the tools that iMovie lacks: rubber-band volume levels, multiple overlapping audio tracks, a convenient timeline, audio processing effects like reverb and a graphic equalizer, and much more.

Fortunately, you can export your movie into GarageBand to edit its soundtrack with these much more powerful tools. Don't read any further, however, until you've absorbed these two warnings:

• Your movie arrives in GarageBand with only a single, boiled-down audio track. You can't adjust the camcorder audio and the iMovie music independently. (That's a good argument for avoiding adding any music in iMovie. Wait until you're in GarageBand to add all music and sound effects.)

• The iMovie → GarageBand train goes only one way. Once you've worked with a movie in GarageBand, you can no longer return to iMovie for further edits. You can return to iMovie, edit the video, and re-export the thing, but of course then you lose all the audio work you'd done in GarageBand the first time.

GarageBand Basics

GarageBand is a music composition program, containing dozens of powerful tools. It lets you combine ...