In the previous video, I showed you how to add text, backgrounds, and transitions.
In this part, I'm going to cover how to add or modify audio.
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There are two types of audio you are likely to add to your video:
music or sound effects and voiceover.
Let's look at the first one.
iMovie provides a number of canned options in the audio library.
And you can see here there are a number of sound effects and jingles that Apple provides
and you can preview these, for example, selecting the folder you are interested in.
Let's look at ambiance first.
I'll select Forest and tap the play button. And we can hear what that sounds like.
[birds chirping]
And there are animal sounds.
[crickets]
And if we like it, then we can drag the track into our project.
It appears as a green track.
We can shorten it by using the trimming bar.
Now, you may want to mute the video clip so that the audio track that you've added is
the only thing heard.
If there are noises in your footage that you wish to cover, for example traffic, this is
a great way to do it.
But it's much better to use the natural sounds you've captured rather than a canned sound.
[natural sounds of insects]
Another option is music.
Apple provides a number of jingles of different types and lengths.
[music]
Drag one into the timeline and drop it.
This one, Borealis, is 30 seconds long and might be used during an opening sequence.
[music]
You can also use other music that you or others have created.
However, you must have a license to use any music that you did not write or perform yourself,
unless it's in the public domain.
Also, if you have Garageband or similar application, you can create unique background music for
your videos.
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A final option I'll cover is voiceover.
Voiceover is the voice of an unseen narrator that is superimposed on one or more clips
in your video project.
This option provides an alternative to having someone on camera explaining a topic.
With a voiceover, you can explain something while showing footage illustrating what you
are talking about.
To record a voiceover, all you do is click the microphone icon.
This reveals a record button.
By clicking on the button next to it, you can select the audio input, and you either
select your built in microphone
With the internal mic, you can adjust the volume.
However, it's best to use a good external mic, which I'm going to select.
Also, it's a good idea to mute any sounds in your project so they don't get recorded
along with your voice.
And then to record, place the playhead at the point you want to begin.
Tap the record button and you'll get a 3 second countdown.
[beep, beep, beep]
And then the recording will begin and iMovie will record your voice.
To stop, all you have to do is tap the record button again or hit the spacebar and the recording
will stop.
You can see that the voiceover track has been placed below the music track.
If you take a close look at the two tracks, you can see that the music track is muted
whenever my voice occurs in the voiceover track.
This is called ducking.
[music and background voice]
If your voiceover is too low, you can raise the volume by dragging this line inside the
audio track to whatever percentage sounds best.
You can also modify the volume of other clips relative to the voiceover by using the volume
controls in the toolbar.
In the next part, we'll finish up this tutorial by looking at some advanced options and then
how to export your finished project.
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