Having some trouble with importing audio and editing it in iMovie (iLife '11)

Question

Hey guys. Hopefully some of you will be willing to help me with my problem.
Basically I have a video that I've imported into iMovie just fine, and I have a separate audio file that I want to lay over the video. I've figured out how to do this (throw the audio clip into iTunes, then import audio from the iTunes library browser within iMovie). My problem is that I want to have the audio clip I've imported from iTunes come in at a certain point on my video clip, and I want to completely mute the video's sound so that I can ONLY hear the audio clip I've imported from iTunes when that starts playing.
If anyone can help me on how to do this, or if I was confusing and anyone needs clarification please let me know and I'll do my best to replay as quickly as possible.
Thank you very much for any and all input!

Answer 1

Drag your audio track from the Music Browser directly onto the point on your video clip where you wish the audio to start. Don't drag it into the background, but onto the clip thumbnail in your Project. I'm assuming that you have already created a Project and dragged clips from the imported Event. All the editing has to be done in the Project - not the Event.
You will now see a green bar (ribbon) beneath the clip thumbnails, representing the inserted audio. If you click on the small waveform icon at the lower right below the Project thumbnails panel, the audio waveforms will appear (coloured light and medium blue).
You can slide the audio back and forth. You can trim the ends by hovering the playhead (red vertical line) over either end of the green bar until you see a cross-hair icon - click and drag inwards or outwards (subject to audio being available at either end). You can also click on the small gear icon at the start of the audio track and select Clip Trimmer - here you can trim the ends by dragging the yellow handles whilst viewing the corresponding video.
You can split the audio - place the playhead at the proposed split point on the highlighted audio track, right-click (or Control-click) and select Split Clip from the pop-up menu.
If you click on the small gear icon at the start of the track, you can select the Clip Inspector. Click on Audio Adjustments. Otherwise just double-click the green bar and select Audio from the Inspector. In the Inspector you have many choices for editing audio, such as, volume levels, ducking, fading, enhancement, equalizer settings and so on.
You can mute the original audio by double-clicking the video track (or using the gear icon), then reducing the volume in the Inspector's Audio tab. Another way is to use the Ducking feature. Open the Inspector for your added audio track and move the Ducking slider to the zero position - this will mute all other tracks running in parallel with the track you've inserted.
You can easily fade audio tracks in and out without using the Inspector. Open the waveforms by clicking on the waveform icon (as described earlier). At each end of an audio track you will see a small greyish coloured box as you hover over that area. Click and drag as far as you want to create an audio fade. As you do this you will see the waveforms drop in volume.
You can also select sections of audio in the audio track. In the bottom half of the audio track (with waveforms selected) click and drag to surround the selection with a yellow border. Now you can click on the volume line to adjust the volume up or down for that section. Drag the yellow dots to extend or reduce the fade on either side of the selection.
Hope this helps! I think I've covered the essentials.
John
Message was edited by: John Cogdell