Adding Audio to an iMovie

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How To Add Royalty Free Music To Your iMovie

iMovie is the video editing software included with Apple Macs. It allows users to import video clips, edit them and add music, audio and effects to make their own movies. Using royalty free music in your iMovie project is a great way to set all kinds of moods - for example for a thriller, chase, comedy or romantic scene.

iMovie makes it really straightforward to add music to your video project to help create a professional movie production.

Audio Tracks and Clips

To start, you'll need to open your project in iMovie, and select the Timeline option to view it. iMovie uses Audio Tracks that run alonside your video timeline, and onto these tracks you can place Audio Clips (ie music files). iMovie has three audio tracks. One already contains any audio that is embedded in your video clips. The other two tracks are free for you to use to add music, sound effects or other audio. In addition, each track will allow you to layer audio within that track, so you can easily build up almost limitless audio layers. For example you could have some music, some dialogue, and a sound effect all layered on the same track. To the right of each audio track you'll see a checkbox - this turns off the audio for that track, it's a good way to help you focus on just one audio track when you're building up your soundtrack.

Adding Music To Your Movie

The most usual way to add audio to your project is through the Audio Pane. Access this by clicking the Audio button - you'll see this in the icon bar, on the lower right part of the screen. The Audio Pane will use your iTunes library as it's default source for any audio and music files you wish to add to your movie. You can use the same search facilities as you would when searching your iTunes library for music. Once you've located the music file you want to add to your project, you should move the Playhead in your project to the point where you want the music to be inserted, next click the audio track to select which track you want to place the music within, then click "place at Playhead" button in the Audio Pane. After a short pause, iMovie will put your music file on the audio track you selected, showing it as a bar with the name of the music file displayed on it.

Editing Music and Audio

Another way to add audio, is simply to drag an audio file from the Audio pane onto whichever Audio Track you want to place it. You can also use this drag/drop method to move files from your desktop into your iMovie project. If you need to locate music or audio files that are not part of your iTunes librray, you can easily import them by selecting File>import and then selecting the file you choose from your computer drive. Once your music or audio is placed on the Audio track you chose, you can trim the audio to silnce any parts you don't want to be played. Use the crop markers to choose which parts of the audio file to crop, then choose "Crop" from the edit menu.

Changing The Volume

You can easily change the volume of audio clips, select the Edit Volume checkbox ot the bottom of the iMovie window (or select view>show clip volume levels). You'll then see lines appear in each audio clip, to represent the volume of each. Select a line, then adjust the volume adjustment at the bottom of the window to change the volume of that clip. Clicking and dragging each line will affect the volume of that clip at a specific point, which is a great way to draw in fades, or raise and lower volumes for particular points in your audio clip.

Audio formats - iMovie will work with any audio formats that are supported by Quicktime, which includes mp3, WAV and AIFF. Royalty free music is widely available in formats that iMovie will use.

Royalty Free Music For iMovie

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