iMovie '09 & iDVD: The Missing Manual

Background Music

If you drag a piece of music into the background well of your storyboard—basically, anywhere except onto a clip—the background of the entire storyboard area develops a broad green bubble. That's your clue that you've just installed a piece of what Apple calls background music.

Understanding what, exactly, Apple means by this term—and figuring out how it's different from the sound effects–style music—is not especially easy. This much, though, is clear:

• Background music appears in the storyboard. The music appears as a huge green or purple background bubble behind your filmstrips. (Sound-effects audio, on the other hand, appears as a skinny horizontal stripe under the filmstrip.)

• The music ends at the end of your video, even if the song isn't over yet. If the song is longer than the movie, a special vertical indicator bar appears after the last filmstrip to let you know. (It's a vertical dotted line with two musical notes.) And if you then add more video to the project, the background music auto-expands to include it. It's stretchy that way.

• Background music generally plays from the beginning of your movie. You can drag it into a different spot, however, as described on Pinning and Unpinning Background Music.

• If you place two pieces of background music right up against each other, iMovie plays them consecutively, with a crossfade in between. You can add another piece the same way you added the first one: by dragging its name from the "Music and Sound Effects" browser. ...