IMovie 11 adjusting photo duration - won't change, various times showing!

Question

IMovie 11 adjusting photo duration - won't change, various times showing!

H E L P!!!! I have just installed Imovie 11. I am in the finishing stages of a project which HAS TO BE COMPLETED in the next 2 days. I am having grief adjusting the duration for my still photos. I click on the COG - Clip adjustments - change the timing to 08:00 and tick the APPLIES TO ALL STILLS box. The clip won't change and some of them show 12s, some 10s ect. HOW DO I CHANGE THIS?? WHY IS IT SUCH A DRAMA??? I WANT MY STILLS to show for eight seconds only. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME???? THANK YOU

imac, Mac OS X (10.6.5), CREATING IMOVIE WITH STILL PHOTOS ONLY

Posted on Dec 15, 2010 2:46 PM

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Answer 1

sineatir

Level 1

0 points

Jan 4, 2011 10:01 PM in response to Shazack_bears

I have the same issue. The stills adjustments do not seem to stick. And the program assigns it's own random timing.

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Answer 2

Jan 7, 2011 10:48 PM in response to sineatir

I have since removed all the transitions, changed the timing to what I wanted, then re-added the transitions and this worked for this project. However I am now working on a much smaller movie, done everything right this tie, but the timing goes haywire!!! Back tot he drawing board I guess. thanks for your help. Shaz

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Answer 3

Jan 17, 2011 2:36 PM in response to Shazack_bears

I'm having the same problem. I cannot adjust the slide durations, it's like the program just ignores me and makes up it's own durations. Pretty big problem.

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Answer 4

Surgio

Level 1

0 points

Feb 22, 2011 12:39 PM in response to Shazack_bears

I had the same problem. I don't know if this is just a bandaid on a bigger problem, but by using the Precision editor I was at least able to adjust my stills individually and keep my transitions from assigning their own random and very quick transition timing. I would enter in for example 5 or 5s and it would change the duration to .05s. Not what I had in mind of course. By accident I opened the precision editor and was able to add 2s per still needed. Mine all had to be different durations, but I do remember in iMovie 08 the ability to make all the same. Pretty frustrating and I hope they come up with a better fix than this temporary solution I found.

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Answer 5

Angela.P

Level 1

4 points

Mar 26, 2011 11:35 AM in response to Questionable Sanity

I agree that this is a problem. iMovie seems to randomly set duration.

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Answer 6

sauble

Level 1

51 points

Mar 26, 2011 10:07 PM in response to Surgio

Many people have posted on this issue, including myself. I've spent a lot of hours on problem, and have come up with a solution that allows me to vary both the image duration and the transition duration in my movies.

Here's my process that I have posted before and that I still use:
-> Knowing that (a) I want most of the photos to be visible for 5 seconds and most transitions for 2 seconds and (b) that a transition takes half from the photo before and half from the photo after, under File>Project Properties>Photo Duration I chose 7 seconds - each photo will 'lose' a total of 2 seconds from the transitions in front and behind. I did not check either "Applies to all transitions." or "Applies to all photos." - See below for why.
-> I discovered that all the photos have to go in before I add any transitions. This was new to me. With all previous versions of iMovie I simply added a photo then a transition then another photo one at a time. I had to fiddle with the timing adjustments, but at least I could fiddle. With this new version of iMovie I can't. Once the transition is in place, I cannot change the duration of the photo.
-> Sometimes, I want a longer or shorter duration for a photo. For example, on photos to which I apply the Ken Burns effect, I often want the image on the screen for a slightly longer time. In this case, I have to use the inspector to change the duration before I add the transitions. So I might set the time for 8 seconds; when a two second transition is added before and after, the time for this photo becomes 6 seconds, which is what I want.
-> The same applies if I want a transition to be shorter or longer than 2 seconds. If, for example, I want the duration for a transition to be 1 second, then I have to change the duration on the two linked photos to 5 1/2 seconds.

Right now, I working with batches of 5 or 6 photos at a time. I don't put a transition on the last photo in the batch until I have added the next group of photos. And things get really tricky if I don't like my original design. If I want to change anything, I have to take out all of the transitions linking the photos I want to work on, do the math, make the changes in the photo durations, then put the transitions back.

All of this requires much more prior planning than I am used to with iMovie. I hope it helps those of you who are struggling with this problem.

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Answer 7

Dec 6, 2011 8:58 PM in response to sineatir

I've spent two days struggling witth the same issues as raised by Angela P and Questionable Sanity. The change of clip length via 'Clip Adjustments' sometimes worked, other times didn't. I think it may have something to do with what iMovie 11 thinks is the project length and randomly chcge the clip lengths regardless of what I filled in the 'duration' box. Very frustrating indeed!

I use MacBook Pro running OS X.

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Answer 8

FotoGyrl

Level 1

0 points

Feb 14, 2012 3:34 PM in response to Shazack_bears

We were having the same issue and played around with it. We find that if we choose the File->Project Theme, and UNCLICK the part that says 'Automatically add transitions and titles', and thus click to retain your transitions and titles (not delete them), then it appears we can now adjust the duration of the stills, though it seems to have a mind of its own and tells me what duration it is going to give the different stills (probably based on the transition used on that particular slide), but at least we can make every slide longer if we wish. We have 600 stills, so doing them manually would be a drag, and we messed with many transitions as well. So this seems to be a solution. Let me know if you try it and it works. Thanks.

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Answer 9

BMW M3

Level 1

47 points

Feb 20, 2012 7:28 PM in response to Shazack_bears

i'm having the same issue. i'm seriously about to break my macbook and apple monitor and through the **** thing out the window. it's ******* me off big time. ***? i tell it to goto 2 seconds but the idiot imovie software stays at 0.7 seconds. i'm gonna hit this thing w/ a hammer when i'm done i swear

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Answer 10

Mar 21, 2012 3:56 PM in response to Shazack_bears

I'm into a movie myself and am finding the same issue. Ugh! This has never happened to me before and it's a real pain! I put in 6.0 and it changes it to 11.4. Has Apple commented on this anywhere??

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Answer 11

Aug 10, 2012 5:10 PM in response to Shazack_bears

Set first the photo length to something like 5:00 for minutes or 120s for seconds, then set the audio length to be the same.

Message was edited by: andrei.marincas

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Answer 12

BigEater

Level 1

10 points

Aug 26, 2012 6:35 PM in response to andrei.marincas

I ran into the problem after I laid in a sound track. Once the track was in, I couldn't change any of the durations.

To me it seems like somehow iMovie decides all by itself on a duration for the movie and then that becomes an unchangable default.

In other words, at some point iMovie decides that your movie is going to be X minutes and X seconds long and won't let you change clip lengths if that's going to mess up its default duration. I'm not sure how to test this hypothesis, however.

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Answer 13

Pte Pops

Level 1

16 points

Sep 9, 2012 7:43 PM in response to Shazack_bears

There does not seem to by any reliable solution to this problem. The best advice I have found is to experiment with entering different durations on a slide and see what result you get. For instance, on a slide show I am creating now if I enter 3.0s, iMovie changes the duration to 4.2s; if I enter 2.0s, iMovie changes the duration 3.7s. Not a great way to create, but it seems to be the only way to get close to the results you want. This is a major flaw in iMovie!!

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Answer 14

Sep 10, 2012 1:34 AM in response to Pte Pops

Rather than using the Precision Editor (as some here recommend), a quick workaround I've used is to enter a duration in the Inspector that will result in a longer duration than what you really want.

Now click on the adjusted still clip so that it is enclosed in a yellow border. Drag the yellow end handle inwards to shorten the clip to the desired duration. As you do this, a small window will reveal the incrementally adjusted length. Once you have the exact duration, right-click (or control-click) within the yellow border and select "Trim to Selection" from the pop-up menu. This process will not disrupt any transitions either side of the still clip (but will shorten the clip to the desired length) - unless, of course, you shorten the clip to such an extent that the transition doesn't have enough media to work with.

TIP: In iMovie's menu item iMovie>Preferences, in the General tab, check (tick) the box labelled "Display time as HH:MM:SS:Frames". This gives you greater control when editing. When typing in durations in the Inspector, enter all individual times (minutes/seconds etc) with 2 digits separated with a colon.

John

Message was edited by: John Cogdell

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Answer 15

May 22, 2013 10:21 PM in response to Shazack_bears

I think I've found the solution. You can go to Edit > Transition Overlap > Half - "Maintain Project Duration". Now the clip length will be exactly as you set it.

For a company such as Apple, iMove is very unintuitive.

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