Two iMovie questions/locking in new audio & split screen

Question

Two iMovie questions/locking in new audio & split screen

I have a full screen interview subject I've positioned to the right side of the screen. I am trying to place a colored box on the left side of screen, then put copy on top of it.

I've also recorded the audio for the interview on a separate digital recorder. I imported the new audio and have sync'd it fine under the video.

Here are my two questions.

1. The newly imported audio track is separate from the video. The original camera audio is part of the video itself. How do I get rid of the original audio (from the camera) and lock the new audio to the video so I can edit without dealing with two separate elements (separate video and audio)?

2. I have created a colored box out of a still shot and just set it to repeat for the amount of time of the interview video. I planned on using the split screen effect to insert the box and employ the mask area to split the screen like I want. But I can't drag the box footage over the original to start the process. Must the box be an actual video too? Or can I use the repeated still shot as video and do the same thing? Or is there an even easier way of putting a box where I want it?

If anyone has an answer for my dilemma, I would appreciate your suggestions.

Thank you,

Leonard

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 16Gb of RAM

Posted on Jun 20, 2012 5:32 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

AppleMan1958

Level 7

27,492 points

Jun 20, 2012 7:49 AM in response to Leonard Wheeler

Final Cut Pro X has great tools for syncing up audio like this. In iMovie it is a little more difficult.

In iMovie, I would first do a movie that simply combines all the audio with all the video. You can line up the video both by sound and by looking at the wave forms. Once it is lined up, you can go into the clip inspector and set the volume for the video track to zero.

Next SHARE/EXPORT USING QUICKTIME and choose Apple Intermediate Codec for your codec to preserve as much quality as possible. This will marry the secondary audio to the video track.

Now import the movie you just made into iMovie into an Event. Now you can edit the audio and video together.

I am not clear why you need the box. Perhaps to put text on? One solution would be to create your box and any text required in Keynote. You can even green screen it in keynote for an interesting effect.

Hear is a sample of using text in Keynote with a picture in picture effect. You could do this with a side by side as well.

You could also get a nice effect with greenscreen in keynote.

I created the bullets in Keynote again. This time I created a green background on a gradient between two similar shades of green (green screen works better if the green is not too perfect).

Then I exported as a timed QuickTime movie. I did not spend a lot of time making it pretty. I could adjust the size and color of the text to make it more readable for example.

I imported into iMovie and used this as a green screen clip over video.

Here are the results.

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Answer 2

Jun 20, 2012 8:10 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Many thanks, Appleman. Makes perfect sense. I will try it out.

Best regards,

Leonard

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