Why does iMovie seem to suck

It will take a little longer than 15 minutes to master iMovie.

1) No sure if that's a question or a rant. If you delete the first picture what did you plan on replacing it with? A picture of similar length or a black screen. The first option is easy enough, just drag the replacement picture to the position previously held by the deleted photo. If you want a black screen to appear in the space previously occupied by the first picture then just drag the second picture back to it's original position.

2) Did you click Apply when you originally viewed the picture in Preview. Remember it's just a preview, unless you click Apply the photo in the timeline will remain essentially a still frame.

Hi Bandit,
Geoff is right of course, both about the time it takes to get used to (any version of) iMovie and about the two items you asked about.

Just guessing that you may not have seen any tutorials on iMovie HD. Apple's tutes are here:
http://www.apple.com/support/ilife/tutorials/imovie/

In addition, you can google for "iMovie 6, tutorials" and find more. I think there are other forums than this on other sites for iMovie users as well - again you can search these out pretty easily.

If it's any encouragement to you: I know guys who've gotten so good with iMovie 6 that their videos look quite professional. It's all in that amount of time you have available - I typically take 8 hours or more to finish a 40 minute video. (Not too uncommon to spend longer.)

You might want to go to your "Settings" (here) and provide info on your Mac OS version, amount of RAM at least. That way - in the future - advisors here will have those details before starting a session with you. More questions are always welcome. 🙂

+wait, it never adds to the actual picture on the track. So I'll click "Show Photo Settings" select the effect and update it.+

iMovie cannot 'update' what you have not added, so clicking on it does nothing. The Update command is to change something already done.

Hey Bandit,
About the Ken Burns Effect: Did you in fact watch the iMovie tutorial which is "Adding Photos"??
That video explains completely how to apply the KB Effect. It's only a couple minutes long - give it a try if you haven't already.

Slideshows: I don't know if this helps you visualize the process but it might:
1. If the slide show you want is going to run at all - it will have to be as long as your sound track.
If you have a sound track 1-minute long and you want photos to appear for 5 seconds each: you'll need 12 photos to provide video display for 1-minute. If you use only 2 photos displaying for 5 seconds each: the video will only last 10 seconds and there'll be 60 seconds of music but 50 seconds will of playing time will be "black screen."

2. No getting around this: if you do use 12 photos, each displaying 5 seconds: then you remove one - the video slideshow will be "short" by 5 seconds (again: black screen for the last 5 seconds).

3. If you have only 2 photos and you want to make them last as long as your sound track: you have a couple of choices as follows:
a. Create "blank" photos of any color in the desire quantity to match your sound track (including the two "real photos" of course). Space the real photos at the beginning and end of the sound track with all the blanks in between.
b. Create the desire number of duplicates from each of your two real photos and use those - either end to end or alternating all the way through to the end.

iMovie "needs" to have that match up in playing times of video and audio to be complete. iMovie is setup so that removing one photo causes the others to move in to fill the gap (or move to one end if the first or last photo in the chain is removed). Am I being clear?

As for a possible problem with your Mac, please report what Mac you have, what OS X version it's running, how much RAM memory. How long have you had it? Have you had problems with it - like when using Garage Band? What kind of problems, if any? Inquiring minds want to know! 🙂

IMovie>click Media tab>select Photos>Show Photo Settings>select photo and it then appears in the Preview pane>make sure the box next to Ken Burns effect is checked>fiddle with setting sliders>click Apply.

If that doesn't work then I would trash the iMovie preferences (plist) and run DIsk Utility, plus check for any software updates.

You also might want to check out Photo to Movie (link below). There is a free trial.

http://www.lqgraphics.com/software/phototomovie.php

I never use Ken Burns in iMovie, it's too ungainly. Even if I have a slideshow as part of an iMovie video project I'll produce the slideshow in Photo to Movie>Save as a OuickTime file>open iMovie>Import QT file.