Getting the Score Back into iMovie

When you share your movie to GarageBand, iMovie assumes that you've finished editing and are ready to hand it off. But what if you want to go back and do more editing? There's no round-trip method to automatically pass the soundtrack back to iMovie. However, it is possible to import the song manually.

To import your song into iMovie:

1.	In iMovie, switch to the Media pane and click the Audio button (if it's not already selected).
2.	From the Audio list, choose GarageBand to display a list of your GarageBand files.
3.	Drag the song you created to the Timeline Viewer or click the Place at Playhead button to add the song to your movie (Figure 14.11). Only songs saved with an iLife preview (indicated by a guitar icon) can be added in this way. Figure 14.11. When you import a GarageBand song, even if it includes video footage in GarageBand, iMovie brings in only the audio.

Tips

• If you change the song in GarageBand, it won't automatically be updated in iMovie. You'll need to import the GarageBand file again.

• You may need to quit and restart iMovie for it to recognize new GarageBand songs you've created.

• A tune in GarageBand always ends nicely because the program fades out the lingering sound of the instruments after the song itself has ended. But when you bring it into iMovie, it often ends abruptly. Although you could set the volume to fade out in GarageBand, I prefer to set the fade using iMovie's audio controls; that way, I can change the duration of the fade without having to redo the song in GarageBand and re-export it for iMovie.