Use iTunes Audio in iMovie

Task #58

Difficulty Level 2

You can use audio that you have imported into iTunes with your iMovie creations. This helps you keep audio files organized with iTunes’s excellent playlists while maintaining one-click access to that content in iMovie where you can use it.

You can use audio from iTunes to add background music for romantic movies, sound effects for action clips, and voice-overs for documentaries. When you add iTunes audio to an iMovie, iMovie imports a copy of the audio, which becomes part of the current iMovie project. By importing the audio into your iMovie project, you keep the original iTunes audio unaltered for future use.

In iMovie, you can preview the audio, adjust its volume, use it in a movie clip, and even fade it in and out. Again, the changes that you make to the audio in an iMovie project do not affect the original audio in iTunes.

Customize It!

Not only can you overlap sounds in two different audio tracks, but you can even do so in the same audio track. If you drag one audio clip on top of another, the two clips will play back mixed together.

Did You Know?

You can create simple echo effects in your movie by layering multiple copies of the same audio clip. To make the audio echo, move each clip to a position that is slightly later in the Timeline than its preceding clip. To really mimic an echo effect, you can also adjust the volume of each clip, with each sound becoming quieter as you move down the Timeline. The clips that form the echo can appear in the same track or in different tracks.