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Adding spoken audio to iMovie

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I am making a movie about my family history and have been interviewing my relatives. I have decided that I want to simply use their audio and lay that over various pictures. I can figure that out no problem, but the video files are enormous and eating up my HDD. I have been recording everything on my video camera, but am wondering if I can use a dictaphone.

Can I record the audio on a dictaphone, import that to iTunes, and then import that audio file? Can I edit in the audio (cut, move, etc.) like I can in iMovie?
 
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Version of iMovie?

Yes. Figure it out using a song from iTunes. See the tutorial at Apple.
 
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I have version 8.0.6.

I know how to add a song from iTunes. I was merely wondering if an audio file from a dictaphone would suffice.

Thanks.
 
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Well, you described importing the audio to iTunes and then into iMovie. The process from iTunes to iMovie will be the same, so you can practice what to do there.

If the question is how to get the audio from the dictaphone to the Mac, you may have to buy an appropriate audio cable, assuming the dictaphone has an output and your Mac as an imput which is likely. Just plug in the cable into the audio in-line on your mac and use software to record it. You may also need to know if the dictaphone is stereo or not because that may influence the cable used and software recording setting. Acquisition will be in real time. QuickTime Player may have a record function. Audacity is free and I believe records. I'm not sure if that version of iMovie has voice over recording. Type the word voice into the help menu search box.

Use "The Levelator" to balance out the low and high volumes of each recording.
 
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chas_m

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I am making a movie about my family history and have been interviewing my relatives. I have decided that I want to simply use their audio and lay that over various pictures. I can figure that out no problem, but the video files are enormous and eating up my HDD. I have been recording everything on my video camera, but am wondering if I can use a dictaphone.

Simpler: take the existing video footage you have, open it in Quicktime, choose "save audio" and save as (new name) in an audio format like AAC.

Now you can simply drop the audio file (which won't take up much space at all) into iMovie over the pictures.

Can I edit in the audio (cut, move, etc.) like I can in iMovie?

It would be better to use a real audio editor. I like Amadeus Pro ($40), but many here would say that Audacity (free) is good enough for the job.
 
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Can I edit in the audio (cut, move, etc.) like I can in iMovie?

Use Audacity ...... Its free and you can get it HERE .....
 
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Cool. Thanks for the tips.

The reason I want to do this is because the video is eating up all the free space on my HDD and I have no more room on my eHDD. Since I only want the audio to accompany photos in the movie why not record the audio only. That way I can cut down on the video being recorded and the space being used on the computer. Thanks.
 
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Another audio software option maybe GarageBand.
 
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Simpler: take the existing video footage you have, open it in Quicktime, choose "save audio" and save as (new name) in an audio format like AAC.

Good point. Once the OP has done that they can remove the bloated video they don't want and gain considerable disk space back.

I would use AIFF as the codec though. Linear PCM format at 48kHz, 16bit sample size with quality at best and stereo if appropriate. The reason is that the Apple video editing tools seem to like that the best. Save all the audio files to that setting and there shouldn't be any audio sync issues either.
 

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