macbook, Mac OS X (10.5.1), i can't remeber....
If by "slide" you are referring to a photo or movie frame added to a project as a "Still Frame" sequence, then select/Right-Click the sequence to open the "Context" menu and select the "Set Duration" option. Now enter the duration in terms of seconds and frames (#:## or ##:##) where the number before the colon is the number of seconds between 0 and 59 and the number following the colon is the number of frames desired between 1 and your project frame rate.
Did you reset the "Applies to Selected Photo" to "Applies to all Photos?" (A single frame added to the project as a "Still Frame" sequence is considered to be a photo by iMovie '08.) I.e., you can add all of your "slides," pick any one at random, change its duration, and apply the duration to all "Still Frame" sequences.
If you have all 1,000 "slides" collected in a single iPhoto "Event" and the are named in an alpha-numeric sequence in the order you want them loaded, then you can drop all 1,000 at once, change the duration of one and apply the new duration to all 1,000. (I just tested this on 94 images in an iPhoto "Event" and it worked like a charm taking less time than it takes to describe the process here.) If, however, you are saying you want iMovie to select the frame you want from 1,000 clips and automatically add it to your project for you, then you are out of luck.
actually this doesn't work at all ...If i put a colon sign at all under 'set duration' it says 'invalid number'
Not sure what is wrong with your application but just changed the default "4:00" duration for all 94 sequences to 59:29 (59 seconds and 29 frames which is the longest duration allowed before resetting to 1:00 in my application) and than re-set all 94 back to 10:00 (10 seconds and no frames). Would you happen to be using v1.0 or v1.0.1 of iMovie '08 for your project?
Good call, Appleman. Forgot I'd set that preference on "Day One" and took it for granted that everyone used the "frame level" timeline. (Couldn't couldn't operate without it myself.)
Check your "About" window. Since its release there have been 2 updates. The current version still seems to be v1.1 at this time.
Duration less than 1 second
