How to Replace Audio in iMovie

One of the most common questions I get from fellow audio engineers isn't about audio recording, it's about video editing: namely, how to remove and replace an audio track when editing with Apple's iMovie suite. It's a lot easier than you might think, and all it requires is a working copy of iMovie, no fancy editing suites necessary.

Before we begin, I'm going to assume that you're running an up-to-date copy of iMovie. I'm using version 9.0.2 of iMovie '11, on Mac OS 10.6. Some of my menus might look different than yours if you're not using the same version, but the function names are still the same and are still present, probably under a different menu.

So, first, let's drag your video file over to your project window. In this file, I'm editing video of the final space shuttle launch. I want to replace the audio -- so I go into my favorite DAW program, and edit a piece of audio exactly the length I want for the video. Before I can add this, I need to remove the audio that's presently on the video, and then drop in the new file.

Let's get started.