iMovie '11 changing clip duration for some reason

Question

Level 1

10 points

iMovie '11 changing clip duration for some reason

When I change the value in the "Duration" field in the "Clip Adjustments" contextual menu and click "Done," sometimes iMovie automatically adjusts that value up or down by 0.1 seconds. I have not been able to figure out why it does this (and how it chooses when to do this), and I was hoping that someone here may know the answer. Thank you.

17" MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Dec 12, 2010 4:58 PM

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Answer 1

Dec 12, 2010 5:44 PM in response to natlee75

iMovie has to round up or down to the nearest 10th of a second when you edit using seconds. You can get more accurate editing by going to iMovie/Preferences and checking "Display Time as hh:mm:ss:frames"

This will let you edit to the nearest frame (e.g. 30 frames per second). Now if you are doing a 30fps project, you would enter 1.5 seconds as 1.15

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Answer 2

Mar 13, 2011 7:39 AM in response to natlee75

I too am fed up with this and last week visited my local applestore where they had not encountered this problem. When they checked on a Macbook it worked perfectly but when tried on an iMac the same problem that we have been having occured. Consequently they reported it to the Genius Bar and suggested I send a feedback to Apple which can be done by going into iMovie and then provide iMovie Feedback. If enough of us send this to Apple maybe they will do something about it. I would like to go back to iMovie 09 in iWorks but don't know how - if anyone knows can they please tell me.

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Answer 3

sauble

Level 1

51 points

Mar 13, 2011 9:07 AM in response to shirley Maple

I and several other people have experienced this problem and posted about it. I thought it was simply something I had to cope with in iMovie 11. Now that I know it may be some kind of bug I will report the problem to Apple. I have figured out a way to work with the duration problem and so will stay with iMovie 11 because I like the audio flexibility it offers.

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Answer 4

Mar 23, 2011 11:51 PM in response to sauble

I have the same problem: Does not hold typed clip duration. Always changes it after I click done. This is very frustrating, because I am building a TV Spot, and it has to be exactly 15 seconds long.

I find I have better luck NOT using the HH:MM:SS method, but it's still frustrating.

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Answer 5

Mar 24, 2011 5:11 AM in response to Claidheamdanns

Do you see this while using transitions? A transition can be no longer than half the longetst clip to either side.

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Answer 6

Mar 24, 2011 6:22 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Yes, it does occur while using transitions. But since a project has no set end time/duration, I would think (logically) that I can put in my two clips, at 7.5s each, and then put in a 5s transition, and have it "steal" 2.5s from each of the two clips, leaving me with my 15s TV spot, composed of three 5s clips (solid segment 1, transition, solid segment 2), right?

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Answer 7

Mar 24, 2011 7:04 AM in response to Claidheamdanns

No. If your two clips are 7.5 seconds, then the longest transition you can use is 3.75 seconds. This is because you may want to use a transition on a third, adjacent clip, which will also need up to 3.75 seconds.

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Answer 8

Mar 24, 2011 7:19 AM in response to AppleMan1958

Yes, but that transition is borrowing time from the clips on either side of it, so it should be able to be up to half of the TOTAL of the two clips it is borrowing from — UNTIL another clip/transition is added. It shouldn't be "planning on the possibility" of a third adjacent clip — it should only make that calculation if the third clip is added.

The two clips are 7.5 seconds each, giving a total of 15 seconds, so if the transition is allowed to borrow up to 3.75 seconds from each of these clips, it's total length ought to be able to be 7.5 seconds, before it does any recalculations.

Perhaps I am just not understanding the logic here, but all I can say is that every version of iMovie prior to this has been more intuitive.

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Answer 9

Mar 24, 2011 5:46 PM in response to natlee75

Weird! That happened to me too!

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Answer 10

Oct 24, 2011 9:48 PM in response to natlee75

when i adjusted the duration of the pictures and the transition,, why not the duration stick to the what i'd set,, its always change and i have to change it again and again but when i change it ,, its immediately change as it like and its become complicated,, it suppose to be easy anyway by using apple

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Answer 11

elikness

Level 4

2,640 points

Oct 25, 2011 7:15 AM in response to Ahmad Nadhir

Transitions will always cause the Durations to be adjusted, that's always been the case with every version of iMovie since vers. 1.0. The video needs to 'sacrifice' some of those video frames to weave them together with video frames from the following video clip. But I agree it would be better to make it more predictable as to how it's going to sacrifice the video frames. One way to adjust this in iMovie '11 (I don't know about previous versions is to set the Overlap setting for transitions). Click on one of your transitions in the Project Browser then go to Clip Menu > Transition Overlap and choose whichever setting is not currently clicked and see how it reacts differently as you reset the Duration.

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Answer 12

3As

Level 1

0 points

Jul 3, 2012 8:22 AM in response to natlee75

elikness is right on the money! Just change the transition overlap setting, and it works like a charm. Thank you all!

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