Adding Sound Effects

You can't capture every sound when you're shootingthe laser blasts in Star Wars weren't real, for example (they were actually recordings of wrenches striking power cables). Sometimes you need ready-made sound effects (many are included with iMovie), or you can even create your own.

To add a sound effect to your movie:

1.	Switch to the Media pane and click the Audio button.
2.	At the top of the pane, choose a sound effects collection (Figure 10.26). Figure 10.26. iMovie includes a number of common sound effects that you can add to your movie.
3.	Double-click an effect's name to preview it, or select an effect and click the Play button.
4.	Drag the effect you want to the Timeline Viewer and drop it into one of the audio tracks (Figure 10.27). Figure 10.27. A sound effect appears in the Timeline like any other audio clip. You can edit sound effects just as you can any other audio clip in iMovie.

To add new sound effects to iMovie:

1.	Quit iMovie.
2.	Make sure the sound file is in the AIFF or MP3 format.
3.	Copy the sound file to [Home]/Library/iMovie/Sound Effects.
4.	Launch iMovie. The sound is now listed in the iMovie Sound Effects list.

Tips

• Kudos to Apple's engineers: iMovie automatically displays the Timeline Viewer when you start dragging a sound effect.

• Don't go overboard with adding sound effects to iMovie's library: the more items, the longer it takes iMovie to launch.