how can we position the start music other than at the very start of the music track>

Drag the music directly onto the video track as close as possible to the start of the video (don't drag to the background area). When you drop the music onto the video a green audio track will appear below the video. If you have only one video clip of 45 seconds in the project, the audio will cover only that 45 seconds.

The audio track can be shortened by hovering the pointer near either end, then clicking and dragging inwards when you see the cross-hair appear. You will need to shorten the beginning of the audio track first, then drag the whole track left so that it starts at the beginning of the video again. Continue shortening, then dragging back, until you've reached the desired audio start point (in your case the 3:25m point). Note that you will need to drag out the end of the audio, as it won't extend by itself. Do this each time you trim off a section at the front end of the audio.

You will note that the audio does not extend beyond the end of the video thumbnails, so you will not have to worry about trimming off the unwanted end section of the audio. You can fade out the audio by dragging the fade handles inwards. To see these, hover the pointer over the audio and you will see a small button at either end, just near the volume line (you need to have waveforms turned on). Click on the button and drag inwards to the point where you want the fade to start.

To fine tune, you can drag the ends of the audio track out again to the desired position. You may need to have some preferences turned on to facilitate or perform some of these operations. In iMovie, go to the menu item iMovie > Preferences and in the General tab check the boxes for "Show Advanced Tools" and "Display time as HH:MM:SS:Frames". Also, in the Browser tab check the box for "Show Fine Tuning Controls".

John

Message was edited by: John Cogdell

I've just remembered another way to do this (having slept on it)!

After dragging the music onto the video thumbnails in your project, click on the small gear icon at the start of the green audio track near the top corner. Select Clip Trimmer. A window will open showing the full track. Drag the yellow handles to the desired position then click Done. As you drag, you can view the associated video in the Viewer.

Also, from the menu select View > Playhead Info. You will now see a black panel with white text linked to the skimmer/playhead vertical red line. This panel shows the elapsed time as you skim through the audio track. However, when clicking then dragging the handles, the elapsed time doesn't update until you resume skimming. This means that you will have to stop and start a bit to check the position you've dragged to.

I tend to mainly use the method I described in my first post, but the Clip Trimmer method may suit you better.

John

Message was edited by: John Cogdell