Apple Training Series: iLife 06

Part of what makes projects interesting is using sound creatively. This might mean adding music to a slideshow in iPhoto or sound effects and narration to a video in iMovie. There are many kinds of sounds (often categorized by professionals as dialogue, music, and effects) that combine to make a finished sound track. Like photography, sound is a specialty unto itself.

Unfortunately, sound can be really difficult to manage on your camcorder if you try to do it while you're shooting video. The built-in microphone is omnidirectional, which means it picks up sounds from everywhere around you while you record, resulting in a lot of unwanted noises. Also, because you shoot from a number of different positionsmoving close to and far away from your subjects, starting and stopping the camera between shotsgetting a consistent stream of audio is almost impossible.

If these challenges weren't bad enough, the results of poor audio make for really poor videos. For some psychophysical reason, bad-quality video looks better with good sound, and, amazingly, good-quality video looks worse with bad sound. Many factors go into what constitutes good sound: clear voices that are distinct from background noises; proper relative volume of speech and other elements of the picture; a rich tapestry of sounds to add texture and emotion to the video.

Because it's so hard to get good-quality sound from the camera's microphone while you shoot video, the fastest way to get good sound in your finished projects is to ignore most of the audio from your shoot and instead use music from a professionally created CD. Your video will benefit from the great production value of someone else's work. But if you want production soundthat is, the sound that's going on while you're shooting the videoit takes more effort. You need to use additional microphones and have someone carefully monitor how everything sounds while it's being recorded. For people like Charlie, Jennifer, and Christopher, this adds too much complexity, demands too much equipment, and probably requires too much work.

There are alternatives. You can use your camcorder not only as a digital video recorder but also as a digital audio recorder. And your Mac itself has a built-in microphone. With these handy audio tools and a little basic information, you can add professional-quality sound (and thus professional-quality production values) to your dynamic slideshows and, ultimately, your videos.

In this lesson, you'll revisit Christopher's dynamic slideshow from the birthday party. Adding music as you originally did was an excellent option to create a sound track. Now you will take interviews Christopher recorded during the party and make a narration track with them. Later you'll check in with Charlie and see other narration alternatives that iMovie provides for his simple school report.