8.4. Importing Music from iTunes or GarageBand Nothing adds emotional impact to a piece of video like music. Slow, romantic music makes the difference between a sad story and one that actually makes viewers cry. Fast, driving music makes viewers ' hearts beat fasterscientists have proven it. Music is so integral to movies these days that, as you walk out of the theater, you may not even be aware that a movie had music, but virtually every movie does, and you were emotionally manipulated by it. Home movies are no exception. Music adds a new dimension to your movie, so much so that some iMovie fans edit to music . They choose a song, lay it down in the audio track, and then cut the video footage to fit the beats, words, or sections of the music.
Tip: Even if you don't synchronize your video to the music in this way, you might still want to experiment with a music-only soundtrack. That is, turn off the camcorder sound, so that your movie is silent except for the music. The effect is haunting , powerful, and often used in Hollywood movies during montage sequences.
8.4.1. Tunes from iTunes If you've been using the free iTunes jukebox software to manage your music collection, you're in for a real treat. iMovie is well integrated with the other programs in its iLife software suiteincluding iTunes. You can view, and even play, your entire music library, complete with its individual playlists, right in iMovie, making it easy to choose just the right piece of music to accompany your video. (If you've created homemade songs in GarageBand, this feature is your ticket to importing them into iMovie, too. They show up in the iTunes playlist named after you.)
Tip: You can use iTunes to build a music library by converting the songs on your audio CDs into MP3 files on your hard drive, by buying individual pop songs from the iTunes Music Store, or by importing digital audio files you found on the Internet. See iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual for complete instructions.
Here's how you go about choosing an iTunes track for your movie: -
Open the Audio pane, if necessary (Figure 8-3) . The pane changes to reveal your iTunes music collection. (If you don't see your list of songs, click the iTunes flippy triangle above the panel.) -
Find just the right song . The panel is filled with useful controls to help you find the right music. For example, if you've organized your iTunes music into playlists ( subsets ), you can use the pop-up menu above the list to choose the playlists you want to look over. (All other songs are temporarily hidden.) You can also use the Search box at the bottom of the list, as shown in Figure 8-4. To listen to a song, click its name and then click the round Play button beneath the list. Or, if you think life is too short already, just double-click a song name. (To interrupt playback, either double-click a different song, double-click the same one, or click the round Play triangle button to turn it gray once again.) You can sort the list alphabetically by song name, artist name, or song length, just by clicking the appropriate heading above the list. (Ordinarily, you wouldn't think that it would be very useful to sort the list by track length. But remember that in the context of a video-editing program, finding a song that's exactly the right length for your video might wind up being more important than which band plays it.)
Tip: The playback controls on the Audio pane are independent of the playback controls in the Monitor window. You may find it useful, therefore, to play your movie in progress as you listen to the different songs, so that you can preview how the music might sound when played simultaneously with the video.The easiest way to experiment in this way is to click the Play button in the Audio panel at precisely the same instant that you press the Space bar to begin the movie playback.
Figure 8-4. Left: Choose any of your playlists to navigate your massive music collection.
Right: You can also click in the Search box. As you type a song or performer's name, iMovie hides all songs whose names don't match, so that you can quickly home in on a certain song or group of songs from among thousands. (To restore the entire list and delete what you've typed, click the little X button at the right end of the Search box.)  -
Place the music into one of your audio tracks . You can go about this in either of two ways. If the Playhead is already parked where you want the music to begin (you can take this opportunity to move it, if you like), just click the song name and then click the Place at Playhead button beneath the song list. iMovie takes a moment to deposit the entire song, beginning at the point you've indicated. You can also drag the song name directly out of the list and down into the Timeline Viewer. As long as you don't release the mouse button, and as long as the cursor is in one of the two audio tracks, you'll see that you can simultaneously move the Playhead and position the beginning of the song at just the right spot. Release the mouse when the song looks like it's in the right place. (On the other hand, you can always adjust the starting point of the music after you've placed it, by dragging its audio-clip stripe horizontally.) Depending on the length of the song you've selected, the importing process can take 30 seconds or more. That's how long it takes for iMovie to copy the iTunes track into a new audio file (in your project's Media folder). When it's complete, a new colored bar appears in the audio track, labeled with the song name. FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTION
Fun with Copyright Law | | Don't I break some kind of law when I copy music from a commercial CD, or use iTunes Music Store music in one of my movies? Exactly what constitutes stealing music is a hot-button issue that has tied millions of people (and recording executives) in knots. That's why some iMovie fans hesitate to distribute their iMovie films in places where lawyers might see themlike the Internet. Frankly, though, record company lawyers have bigger fish to fry than small-time amateur operators like you. You're perfectly safe showing your movies to family and friends , your user group, and other limited circles of viewers. In fact, Apple encourages you to use iTunes Music Store purchases in your movies; after all, Apple is the one who made them available right in iMovie. You'll risk trouble only if you go commercial, making money from movies that incorporate copyrighted music. Still, if your conscience nags you, you could always use one of your GarageBand compositions. And even if you're not especially musical, the world is filled with royalty-free musicmusic that has been composed and recorded expressly for the purpose of letting filmmakers add music to their work without having to pay a licensing fee every time they do so. Some of it's even free. For example, check out www.freeplaymusic.com, a Web site filled with prerecorded music in every conceivable style, that you're welcome to use in your movies at no charge. If that's not enough for you, visit a search page like www.google.com, search for music library or royalty-free music , and start clicking your way to the hundreds of Web sites that offer information about (and listenable samples of) music that you can buy and use without fear. (Many of these sites require a RealAudio plug-in, an add-on for your Web browser that you can download and install from www.real.com.) |
Try dragging the Playhead back to the beginning of the music bar and pressing the Space bar to play it. If it doesn't have quite the effect you thought it would, click the newly placed music's bar and then press the Delete key, to make room for your next experiment. 8.4.2. Tunes from GarageBand Here's a nice perk of having an integrated suite of programs like iLife: you can share the output of each program and touch it up in the others. For example, any musical compositions you've worked up in GarageBand also show up at the top of the Audio pane.
Note: Actually, you see in this list only the compositions you've saved with what Apple calls an iLife preview. To make sure your piece has this preview attached, open GarageBand  Preferences, click General, and turn on "Render a preview when saving." This option makes saving a GarageBand song take longer, but its necessary if you want your musical masterpieces to show up in iMovie.
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