Adjust audio in iMovie on iPad

Audio waveforms are visual representations of the actual sound. You can show audio waveforms to adjust and compare volume levels between clips or to help align audio clips with your video.

• With your project open, tap the Waveform button .

  Waveforms change as you adjust clip volume and are colour-coded with yellow and red peaks, so you can see whether your audio is loud or distorted. In this example, the detached audio clip (in blue) contains some of these peaks.

  

  Yellow indicates that the audio is just above the ideal volume range. Red indicates that the audio is too loud and potentially distorted; you should lower the clip’s volume until there is little to no red.

  If you mute a clip, the waveform appears dimmed but is still visible.

1. With your project open, tap a clip in the timeline to reveal the inspector at the bottom of the screen.

2. Tap the Audio button .

3. Do any of the following:

   • Turn sound off or on for a clip: Tap the Mute button next to the volume slider. When the clip is muted, tap the Mute button again to turn sound on.

     When you turn off the sound for a video clip, a mute icon also appears in the upper-left corner of the clip in the timeline.

     

   • Adjust volume: Drag the volume slider left or right.

     To make sure that the sound in your video clips can be heard over the background music, iMovie applies audio “ducking” to background music. Ducking lowers the volume of background music clips whenever there’s a video clip whose sound is playing at the same time. When a video clip’s sound is off, ducking isn’t applied.

4. Tap outside the inspector to close it.

You can quickly add fade-ins and fade-outs to audio clips in the timeline using fade handles.

Fades appear as shaded areas in the clip to represent where the volume increases or decreases.

If you have a video clip with audio, you must first detach the audio as a separate clip in order to create fade-ins or fade-outs. See Arrange audio clips in iMovie on iPad.

1. With your project open, tap an audio clip in the timeline to reveal the inspector at the bottom of the screen.

2. Tap the Audio button .

3. Tap Fade to reveal fade handles at the beginning and end of your clip.

   

4. Drag the fade handles to set the duration of the fade-in and fade-out.

You can adjust the speed of audio clips in iMovie. You can even fine-tune speed adjustments for a single clip by dividing it into ranges, each with its own speed. For example, you could set multiple ranges so that a clip slows down, speeds up and then slows down again.

1. With your project open, tap an audio clip in the timeline to reveal the inspector at the bottom of the screen.

2. Tap the Speed button .

   A yellow bar appears on the clip, with range handles at each end.

3. To create ranges within a clip, do one of the following:

   • Drag either yellow range handle.

   • Tap Add in the inspector to create another range.

4. In the inspector, drag the slider right to increase the speed, or left to decrease it.

   As you drag, the relative speed is displayed below the clip (2x means twice the normal speed, 1/2x means half the normal speed and so on).

5. If you want to create additional ranges, tap the portion of the clip outside the currently selected range, or tap Add in the inspector to create a range border at the playhead position.

   Drag the yellow range handles to adjust the range, then adjust the range’s speed using the slider.

   Each range you create is indicated by a solid white line in the clip.

   

   To reset your adjustments, tap Reset in the inspector.

6. When you’ve finished, tap anywhere outside the inspector to dismiss it.

By default, iMovie preserves the pitch of audio clips that are sped up or slowed down. To change this, tap the Project Settings button , then tap to turn on “Speed changes pitch”. This allows a recorded voice to be higher when sped up or lower when slowed down.