IMovie '08 Editing Delay Issues

Question

I truly hope someone out there can help me with this because the solution from the "genius" guys at the Apple Store was that I needed to do my project in Final Cut Pro. I am creating a movie in iMovie '08 using approximately 70 illustrated drawings (jpeg) and recorded about 80 lines using a snowball in iMovie. Each of the lines are separate sound files (7 year olds are good for about 1 line without mistakes) I am now in the process of timing the images to the voiceover and when I click on the voiceover clip to move it the hand moves but not the clip or skim line and then the beach ball comes up for a spin and then the clip moves but not with the hand. So basically its all a guess as to where the voiceover lands. Sometimes it overlaps another one or is not close enough. The delay basically makes it impossible to edit efficiently. The movie file itself is around 89MB. I will tear my hair out if I have to edit in this manner. Any suggestions out there? I have done this process successfully with a shorter 2 minute movie (see sample at YouTube, search for "Little 'O'opu Who Lost His Way") but this one is about 7 minutes. Mahalo!

Answer 1

I wish I had thought about recording in GarageBand as your explanation below would seem to alleviate the issue I'm having, unfortunately that means recording the Grade 1 students all over again which took an entire school day.
How so? If recorded separately and brought into iMovie for editing, then the same files can be brought into GarageBand for editing from the original source location/management application. If the "voiceovers" were made directly to iMovie '08, then they can be exported either as an audio track along with your video or exported separately as an audio only file like AIFF. In either case, the audio track (or tracks) are edited separately from video in GarageBand. E.g., if you need to physically split an audio track in GarageBand, you select the track you wish to edit, move the playhead to the point where you which to split the track, and simply select the "Split" Edit menu option. If you then deselect the track as a whole and re-select one of the split portions, it can then be dragged to a different track, or, if the is space available, moved along the time axis for alignment to the video track. Periods of silence can be delete if present and, as to the actual adjustments to the audio such as fades and setting of volume, each audio segment on any audio track can be manipulated in much the same way you used to do this in the old version of iMovie using the "rubber band" contour/control. In many ways you may find your audio editing more reminiscent of iMovie HD than iMovie '08.
I'd like to be able to salvage what I have if I could. What if I export the existing movie as is, extract the sound files only in QuickTime Pro--maybe I could import and edit in GarageBand and reimport into iMovie?
As indicated above, this is not necessary since you can export/share your project directly from iMovie '08 as a single audio/video file, video only file, and/or audio only file. Best strategy here would be to export/share your iMovie '08 project content to your final target compression format. GarageBand will import and thumbnail the video and convert the audio to AIFF for editing. When finished editing, export the GarageBand project using the "Export to Disk > Full Quality" option. GarageBand will then take your original video and mix it with your edited audio which is then re-converted back to your original audio codec.
I'm not very conversant in GarageBand (or iMovie for that matter) so I could possibly make a mess of everything but I'll give it a try.
GarageBand also has a "Revert to Saved" option which will return you to your last saved version of your project but if you fail to make periodic saves during the work session, you won't get the most out of this option.