Stills keep snapping to wrong place on timeline

Question

Stills keep snapping to wrong place on timeline

Just when I think I have iMovie figured out, something happens. I have this long piece of narration that I've imported into a new project. Now I want to add stills to illustrate the narration along appropriate points of the timeline. I have added three stills so far but when I try to drag them to a different place along the narration in the timeline, they keep snapping back to the beginning as shown in the screenshot. This has never happened to me before, but then, I don't normally start with a long piece of narration. How do I fix this?

Mac mini, macOS 10.15

Posted on Nov 24, 2022 1:34 PM

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Answer 1

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Timothy Arends1 Author

Level 2

389 points

Nov 27, 2022 10:57 AM in response to Rich839

Thanks. For anyone else who might be interested, I worked around this limitation simply by adding the stills to the beginning of the video first, working my way down. Not the way I expected to do it, but it had a certain logic to it, since the stills snapping to the beginning of the timeline ensured that there were no gaps between the stills.

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Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

47,280 points

Nov 24, 2022 2:31 PM in response to Timothy Arends1

Hi, Timothy,

Clips placed in the main (lower) timeline will snap together as if magnetized. That is the way that the software is designed.

Clips placed in the upper timeline, above the main one, can be freely moved around without snapping.

If you want to work in the main timeline you would need to drag in background clips of suitable duration to act as spacers to separate the photo clips.

— Rich

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Answer 3

Rich839

Level 8

47,280 points

Nov 27, 2022 11:14 AM in response to Rich839

However, you can move the still clips around in the lower timeline. You can drag a clip from one part of the timeline to another part, and the clips will separate to receive it.

-- Rich

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Answer 4

Rich839

Level 8

47,280 points

Nov 27, 2022 10:59 AM in response to Timothy Arends1

Where there is a will, there is a way.

-- Rich

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Stills keep snapping to wrong place on timeline

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