iMovie 11: How to work with multiple audio tracks?

I want to work with multiple audio tracks from a screencast. I cannot figure out how.

I have several audio files, one from each person that I'm playing with (output from our chat program). And, I have an audio track from the program I'm recording. All are stereo (even the chat -- "Mumble" gives positional information in chat).

Nothing is in iTunes or garage band. I've never used either. Don't know how.

My goal is to be able to take all these, make sure they are lined up properly (audio tracks will all be off slightly based on when people joined the chat and started talking). Adjust volumes on them separately (the program's audio, and one of the chat voices will need adjusting; the other voices are auto adjusted by Mumble).

I cannot even figure out how to import the various audio tracks, let along how to adjust their start times to get them all lined up.

Help, please?

Imovie has a limit of one extra audio track beyond the embedded sound in the video, IIRC.

What you want to do is bring your movie and multiple audio tracks into Garageband, line em up there, then mix down and take the project back into iMovie.

From your other topic:

My current want: Work with more than one audio track (I can't even get a second audio track in, and I do not mean a sound effect or iTune music, or garage band -- I mean an audio file about the same length as my video)

Click to expand...

Under normal circumstances moving forward, I'll have a video file with no audio, and typically three audio tracks -- one from the program, one from my voice, and one (sometimes 2-3, usually 1) from the voice of the person/people I'm working with.

Click to expand...

There may well be a limit, but I'll say that you can add as many tracks as you want.

There's two ways of adding an audio track. You can drop it in to the Project away from a clip and it becomes a Background track. You'll see the background of the Project turn green.

The second way is to drop it on top of the clip and move it around to get the start point right. It then becomes associated with that clip. You can drop further tracks onto the same clip and they just stack up underneath and then you can fade the audio in and out on each track as required. I've just dropped 5 tracks on to a clip.

You can do it all in iMovie, no need for Garage Band as long as you're using iMovie11. In 8 and 9 audio editing was a problem and GB was needed for anything complex, but iMovie11 fixed that.

Hey, that was the hint I needed.

I can just drag the audio in from finder! Something I never thought of, believe it or not -- and it works.

And if, as you say, I can toss multiple audio tracks in 11, then good! No need for GB. Thank you.