Removing Background Noise

In addition to Meg's excellent advice, you can also use the " Ducking" feature in iMovie '09.

Click on the music track, then on the little gear icon at the very beginning of the track. Select Audio Adjustments. The Inspector panel will appear with the Audio tab selected. The 2nd item, just under the track Volume slider, is labelled "Ducking". Check the box "Reduce volume of other tracks to" and move the ducking slider to the desired volume for the "other tracks". In your case the other track will be the embedded audio in the video, that is, the background talking. Reduce this to zero if desired.

John

Hi -
Click on the clip you want to silence, so that it is selected (surrounded by a yellow outline).
On the lower left corner of the clip, click on the button with the gear on it.

From the drop down menu, select Audio Adjustments.

Once that window opens, drag the volume slider at the top of the box all the way to the left.
Close the box.

Your clip will now play back silently while your background music plays.
Repeat on all the clips you want to silence.

Tip: Sometimes it is better not to completely silence a clip, but just better to lower the volume so that it does not compete with the music. Use your judgement.

Hope this helps.

Message was edited by: Meg The Dog to fix typo

Another comment about Ducking that I forgot to mention (must slow down)!

The advantage of using Ducking is that it allows you to lower (or mute) the volume of ONLY the parts of clips under which you have placed a music (or voiceover) track. So if your added music track spans sections of one or more clips, then only those sections (not the whole clip) are affected by the "ducking". In addition, the ducking produces a brief fade out and fade in of the volume, rather than an abrupt change.

John