Locking Background Audio in iMovie 10.1

O.K. I see what you are saying. I am having a little trouble replicating your findings on my set up, that is iMovie 10.1.10 and Mojave. I see by your profile and post info that you are using some old versions -- iMovie 10.1 and Yosemite. You might try updating those to the current versions that I have, your computer specs allowing, and see if that makes any difference.

I set up a project of 4min53secs duration consisting of nine vids of 30.5 secs duration each, and three audio clips of which two were 1.9min in duration and the third was 54.2 seconds.

When I deleted the video clips, the project duration remained the same but the audio clips squeezed together and looked like this:

When I expanded the timeline a bit, using the slider next to the settings button above the time line on the right, the audio clips displayed at their same durations they had before I deleted them, and the project remained the same duration.

I take it that when you do the above exercise you get a different result?

While playing with this I did notice that sometimes the durations of the audio clips did change while deleting and adding video clips. I had to drag the audio clips back to their original length. I didn't have time to stay with it long enough to determine the reason for the duration changes. It might be just an anomaly of the app.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, the problem may be solved by adding the audio clips after you have added and edited your video clips. That is the recommended way.

I don't know if any of the above helps, but thought I'd pass along my findings.

-- Rich

Hi,

It only seems like the audio clip is changing duration. Try using the little slider next to the Settings button above the time line to the right to expand out your time line a little. You will see that the duration stays the same.

-- Rich

The "switch off" audio clip is being deleted because it is attached to the video clip that you deleted. Deleting a video clip deletes audio clips that are attached to it. The attachment is a little blue handle that you can see.

Before deleting the video clip, put your cursor on the attached audio clip and, while pressing down on your mouse or track pad, pull the audio clip down to the lowest audio track well until you see the attachment handle pull away from the audio clip. Now when you delete the video clip the audio clip will not be deleted.

Also, you can move the attachment point by selecting the audio clip and, while holding down the Option and Command keys (or maybe it's just the Option key) , then clicking along the audio clip. The attachment handle connection point will move to where ever you clicked. The idea is to move the attachment handle off of the video clip you are deleting.

Lastly, the preferred work flow is to edit your video clips before adding your audio clips. That avoids a lot of sync problems.

I hope that the above addresses your issue.

-- Rich

It is indeed a curious behavior. Perhaps someone will stumble across the answer and post it.

As you have found, it might be related to differences between audio clips. You might want to compare the clips that worked and the clips that didn't work, as to format, sample rate, and so on, and see if you can determine any correlations.

Best,

-- Rich