Why does audio suddenly die when skimming clips?

Question

Selecting a clip on a word or music beat is vital to getting the clip length right and in the right place in the project. Suddenly the audio is gone when you skim with the cursor and will only come on when you press play, making it impossible to accurately select the clip to be moved.
If you quit iMovie and then start again it comes back ... sometimes! I am using two firewire hard drives [500gig and 1000gig] for the events, leaving the mac drive [250gig] 140g to work with. Is there something I am missing?

Answer 1

You may have already done this, but to hear the audio while skimming clips you need to turn on Audio Skimming.
There are two ways to do this. In iMovie's menu go to View and select Audio Skimming (the second to last item in the View menu) - the shortcut is Command-K. Otherwise click on the Audio Skimming icon to turn it off and on. It's on the right-hand side in the strip of icons running through the centre of the iMovie window, directly to the left of the green audio bars. It's shaped like a waveform with a red vertical line through it.
You need to skim through clips reasonably slowly, otherwise the audio cannot be heard. It's also helpful when working with audio to turn on the waveforms beneath the video thumbnails. The icon for this is at the bottom right of the Project window, and also at the bottom right of the Events window (to the left of the thumbnail sliders).
John
Message was edited by: John Cogdell