Making Video Cuts Over Continuous Audio The Art & Craft of Video Production Teacher: Ken Kimura
email: ken_kimura at lsrhs dot net
There are times when you want to make visual cuts without making audio cuts. For example in a documentary you might have a professor speaking, talking about UFO’s and Flying Saucers. You want to insert shots of various of flying saucers while the professors continues to describe the UFO’s.
IMovie allows you to do this, but you need to plan ahead or do some experimenting. Whenever you do any experimenting, make duplicate copies of your clips by holding down the option key while dragging the clip to another location.
Start with a long clip; like a clip of a professor in his office talking. Make sure you have a backup copy of this clip because these edits cannot be altered beyond one step. Put this clip on the timeline.
Crop a clip of your insert (like a UFO) as close to the exact length you want. Again I highly recommend you do this on copies of clips.
Copy the clip - Go to the Edit menu and select Copy.
Switch your timeline view from Clip View to Timeline View (the one where you can see the relative lengths of each clip and any extra audio tracks).
Put the playhead where you want the insert (UFO clip) to come in.
Paste the video clip in - Go to the Advanced Menu and select Paste Over at Playhead.
Look at your timeline to see what has happened. Just the video of the small clip was inserted in, while the audio of the long clip was moved to an external audio track.
If the timing does not look right. Undo the insert- Go to the Edit menu and select Undo (Apple Z).
