How to Cut Music in iMovie on PC or Mac
Method 1 of 2:
Trimming Music in the Media Window
- Open iMovie on your Mac. It's a purple and white star icon labeled ″iMovie.″ You'll find it on the Launchpad or in the Applications folder.[1]
- Use this method to trim audio that you haven't yet added to the timeline.
- Open the project with the audio you want to trim.
- Click My Media. It's one of the tabs near the top-left corner of the window. All media attached to the project will appear in the main window.
- Highlight the audio you want to trim. Clicking the audio file once selects it. You'll see that it's now surrounded by a yellow line with handles on the right and left edges.
- Drag the left handle to the desired starting point.
- Drag the right handle to the desired end point. Anything outside of the two handles will be trimmed from the audio clip.
- Drag the selected part of the clip to the timeline. The timeline is at the bottom of the screen. This adds the trimmed audio clip to your project.
Method 2 of 2:
Trimming Music in the Timeline
- Open iMovie on your Mac. It's a purple and white star icon labeled ″iMovie.″ You'll find it on the Launchpad and in the Applications folder.[2]
- Use this method to trim music you've already added to your project's timeline.
- Open the project with the audio you want to trim.
- Click My Media. It's one of the tabs near the top-left corner of the window. All media attached to the project will appear in the main window.
- Click the audio clip in the timeline. The timeline is at the bottom of the screen. You'll see that it's now surrounded by a yellow line with handles on the right and left edges.
- Drag the left handle to the desired starting point. Any audio that comes before the left handle will be trimmed from the clip.
- This doesn't permanently delete the audio you trim away. You can adjust the length of the audio again at any time.
- If you want the audio to begin at a specific frame in the video, drag the iMovie playhead (the vertical line with a triangle at the top) to the desired position, right-click the audio, then click Trim To Playhead.[3]
- Drag the right handle to the desired end point. Now only the audio between the two handles will play in the movie.
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