Lazy Web Inquiry

Pasting video over audio (pasting a clipped video track over the extant video without pasting the audio over the extant audio) should be one of the easiest things ever in iMovie; I’d think people would want to do it all the time, and I can’t imagine it’s that hard on the application side (compared with an elaborate transition between shots, for instance). But iMovie ’09 seems either (a) to have made this capacity inaccessible or (b) to have designated it with an unintelligible menu name.
 
Can anyone tell me how to paste a video selection onto the audio of the foundation track?

6 thoughts on “Lazy Web Inquiry

  1. I could attempt this in Quick Time – it would involve examining the properties of the clip I wanted to paste using View and then some tab or another and selecting to work only with the video track, not the audio track, in both files. I can’t actually get Quicktime to launch properly for me at the moment so I can’t look any further, but I imagine that iMovie probably works in a similar way.

  2. So, audio track “A-primary” is the foundation. You have a movie “M” that includes video “v-of-M” and audio “a-of-M.” You want to lay the video element “v-of-M” over audio track “A-primary,” while discarding audio track “a-of-M.” Is that right?

    If so, then Garage Band might be a good place to do it. This is what I would do (caveat: I have no idea if this is the best way; it’s just what I think I know how to do.)

    In iMovie, you’d save the clip in the Project Library, naming it and then “sharing” it to the Media Browser (see options under “Share”). Then you’d

    1. Go to Garage Band and open a new Podcast. Show the Media Browser by toggling cmd-R; choose the Movies tab. Your movie is there.

    2. Drag that movie onto the Podcast track (top row). You’ll get an alarm asking if you want to have a movie instead of a podcast, say OK.

    3. Now there are two tracks: the video track from that movie, and the audio track from that movie. Go to the Media Browser again, and choose Audio; select your preferred audio track from iTunes. Drag it in, creating a new track. Drag its end to the beginning or wherever you want it.

    4. Either delete or mute the original movie audio track. Export/Share the result.

    If it turns out a totally easy way to do this whole thing in iMovie, and there may well be, then I apologize, bowing seven times and throwing dirt on my back. I am only an egg.

  3. Akma, here’s the result of me trying to do the same thing. This should tell you whether I have rightly understood what you want to do.

    Here, I made a movie of my speaking inanities in my kitchen. I laid it over a delightful musical audio, ditching the audio track of me speaking inanities.

  4. Thanks for these suggestions. As it turns out, there’s a more direct iMovie way of doing this (Make sure “Advanced” preferences are turned on, drag clipping onto main track, when you release it click on the “Cutaway” option). That doesn’t mean I’m not having trouble with the whole process — but at least, I now have the memory of Brooke semi-lip-synching to “Kings of the Wild Frontier” to lift my heart and ease my frustrations.

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