Please help - need to import/create song snippets in iMovie

Question

Hi - I'm making a movie in '06 HD which requires a series of short (apx. 1 minute each) song segments taken from longer songs (apx 4 minutes each). After learning how to first crop the song in iTunes, I could not figure out how to import just the cropped part (the imported song played in its entirety in iMovie, despite being cropped in iTunes). Nor does it seem I can crop the music in iMovie itself. If iMovie had 5-6 different audio tracks I could just lay them down overlapping and only "play" the parts I need. Is there some workaround that I've missed here? Is it possible to make a single "song" in iTunes that is in fact made up of segments of different songs. HELP! I'm on a tight deadline.

Answer 1

I wasn't aware that iTunes lets you crop songs... Here is how you can crop it in iMovie:
After you import a song into iMovie, you drag it onto one of the audio tracks, right? Don't worry about the exact location for now. Now you can select it in the timeline (be careful not to change the volume by accident), then play it. Listen only to your song, don't pay attention to the video. Once you get to the part of your song where you want it to start, hit Apple-T to split it into two pieces at that point. This will only split the song in the selected track, and leave the other tracks alone. Select the part before the cut point, and delete it (Backspace key). Repeat the process at the end point, deleting everything beyond the split point. Now you have just the part you want. Drag it on the timeline until it lines up with your video.