Section 22.5. Choosing Menu Audio

22.5. Choosing Menu Audio

Some of Apple's canned themes come with a preinstalled musical soundtrack, and some don't. If you'd like some music to play during, for example, the Sliding Panes theme, you'll have to install it yourself.

You can also replace the music that comes with any of Apple's themes with a song you like better. In the case of musically challenged themes like Anime Pop, this ability is a true blessing, possibly saving lives and sanity .

• iTunes method . If you've got a decent music collection already in iTunes, adding background music is easy. In the Customize drawer , click the Audio button. You'll see a complete list of all your iTunes songs and playlists. Proceed as shown in Figure 22-3.

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  Tip: Keep in mind that some of the most satisfying and appropriate soundtracks of all are the ones that you create yourself, using GarageBand. Any finished compositions that you've exported from GarageBand show up in this iTunes list, too.

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• Drag-from-the-Finder method . If you're not a big iTunes user , you can also drag in almost any kind of audio file straight from the desktop. Make sure that you'veclicked the Settings button at the top of the Customize drawer, and then drag the audio file directly into the Audio well (identified in Figure 22-2) or onto the menu background.

Incidentally, iDVD doesn't do anything to compensate for background video and background audio that aren't the same length. If the music is too short, it repeats until the video is finished playing, cutting off the music if necessary to start in sync with the video track. If the music is too long, the video repeats until the music ends, cutting off the video mid-repeat. Use the Duration slider in the Settings pane to set the loop time, which applies to both sound and video.

Or, if you're really a perfectionist, you could always use a program like GarageBand to match the soundtrack length to the video. Create a nice fade-out at the end of the audio, and a fade-in at the beginning, so that the looping won't be quite so jarring.

Reminder :This technique affects the background music of only the currently displayed menu screen. To apply the change to all menu screens, wrap up by choosing Advanced Apply Theme To Project. (And make sure you dont exceed your 15-minute total menu-length budget!)

Figure 22-3. Here's your mini-iTunes, right in the Customize drawer. Use the playlists list at the top, or the Search box at the bottom, to find an appropriate song for your menu screen. Use the Play button (or double-click a song name ) to listen to a song before placing it. Finally, drag the song you want directly onto the menu screen to install it there.

22.5.1. Replacing Menu Audio

To replace a custom audio file with another, repeat the steps you used to install the music to begin with. iDVD replaces the current track with the new one.

22.5.2. Removing Menu Audio

To remove audio, drag it out of the Audio well, pictured in Figure 22-2. (When the audio well is empty, it shows a 3-D picture of a speaker.)

If you want to remove all audio from your menu screen, you may have to drag twice: Your first drag removes custom sounds, while the second removes the theme sound, if one exists.

22.5.3. Muting Menu Audio

To mute your audio, click the small speaker icon in the corner of the Audio well (Figure 22-3). iDVD disables menu sound and hides the two tiny soundwaves. Click the icon again to restore menu audio. Don't forget to check your audio before burning, as muting the audio in the Settings pane affects the final DVD!