OMG - Help! Why can't I freely move an audio track?

Question

I'm not a novice to iMovie '11, but this is the first time I've had to sync an audio track to the video. Basically, it's a music video. The audio track is the song. I need to sync the video to the track, and the video will be cut into numerous clips. Before Apple totally screwed with the interface, I could have two audio tracks which allowed me to freely move the audio to any point in the video. And it laid out the entire "song" so that I could just keep adding video clips to it and know where the heck I was in the audio. Now when I add an audio track, it gives me a tiny clip of it - I can't extend it to see the entire thing. When I try to add it to existing video in the timeline, it only goes to the end of the video - I can't extend it or move it to sync up. It's locked in place. Am I going to have to go through and edit the audio and the video down exactly before they sync up? That's gonna take me forever. At this point, I wish I could go back to iMovie HD where I could get this down in a straightforward way. I don't get the new system at all, and I've about had it.

Answer 1

Sarah, I think what is happening is you are creating a 'background audio' clip. What you can do to delete that background clip first is to go to the Project Browser on the timeline and click the colored area behind the video clips that designates the audio track. When you see a yellow highlight around the whole audio section (it will be colored in either green or purple) hit delete.
Now to drag the audio clip into the timeline you will first need at least one video clip sitting there to act as an anchor for your floating audio track. Drag the audio and drop dead center on that video clip. iMovie will understand that this is fundamentally different than a background track and give you a floating title bubble you can drag left and right as needed. And depending on the length of the song you should be able to see the whole thing if you need it by using the zoom slider underneath the Project Browser window, lower right.
When you need to cut down the length of a video clip, first select the whole thing by holding CTRL then clicking on the clp. Then drag the left/right edges of the video clips where you would like them to matchup in the beat of the song. The handles on the sides can then be used to Trim Clip to selection, to shorten the length. With the clip highlighted and the selection handles dragged into postion go to Clip Menu>Trim to selection