46 About Movie Maker Audio

Before You Begin

7 About Making Audio a Priority

See Also

47 About Importing Existing Digital Files

48 Add a Soundtrack to Your Video

The two timeline tracks related to your movie's audio are the Audio track and the Audio/Music track. When you import a video into the Collections pane, any audio associated with that video is imported at the same time. This audio will remain sequenced to the video it complements. In other words, if you import a birthday party video in which the crowd sings "Happy Birthday," the movie's Audio track will hold the singing of the song at the proper place in the video. You cannot modify the timing of such audio; the audio remains in synch with the video if you import the video and audio together in this way. If you delete any audio clips from the Audio track, Movie Maker deletes the corresponding video clip also.

TIP

If you cannot see the Audio track, click the plus sign next to the timeline's Video track labeled Video . Clicking the plus sign displays both the Audio track and the Transition track, and the plus changes to a minus sign. Clicking the minus sign once again hides the Audio and Transition tracks to save screen space.

The Audio/Music track holds audio not necessarily synched to your video when you first import or record the video. You can freely move, add, and delete audio clips from the Audio/Music track without affecting the Video track in any way.

Movie Maker offers you complete control over your movie's audio by allowing you to perform the following actions:

• Narration ” You can synchronize music or voice narration to action taking place within your movie.

• Audio Level Adjustment ” You can adjust audio levels for balance when playing back audio and video from both the Audio and Audio/Music tracks.

• Audio Effects ” You can adjust audio to offer effects such as a fade-out from your movie's closing credits or a complete mute of the soundtrack at a specific point.

• Audio Clip Volume ” You can adjust the volume on any and all Audio track or Audio/Music track clips in your movie.

NOTE

Sometimes you'll need to adjust volume levels simply to fix a problem in the original video footage. For example, if the camera's microphone was too close to the sound source in raw video footage you import into Movie Maker, you'll adjust the volume level down for that clip to maintain consistency with the volume levels in the rest of your movie.

All audio and video work together, in sequence, as shown by their tracks on the timeline.