Can iMovie '11 clips in the "timeline" be lengthened?

Hi Ian,

Click on the small gear icon at the start of the clip and select Clip Trimmer. Here you can drag the ends in and out.

Also, clicking on the left/right arrow icon on either end of the clip will show an orange border around the first/last second of the clip. Grab the handles to drag in or out with 1 frame increments.

John

Message was edited by: John Cogdell

Ian - I just had another look at that. When you click on a clip to highlight it with a yellow border, handles appear at each end of the clip. As you've noted, you can drag inwards but not outwards (to extend the clip). I have a strong feeling that this used to work differently - perhaps an update messed things up. AppleMan may know the answer!

John

Ian R. Brown wrote:

In FCE/FCP I can simply grab the end of the clip in the timeline and drag it out (as far as the limits of the master clip allow).

Yes, I had assumed that's what you meant, but when I went into iMovie to double-check how it worked (amazing what you forget), I was surprised that I couldn't just drag out the ends. You can do this with audio tracks that are placed onto a clip thumbnail. They appear in green beneath the thumbnails.

As I mentioned in my second post, I have a recollection of being able to do what you describe, but something may have changed it. It does seem odd that we have to open a separate window (Clip Trimmer) to perform a simple task.

John

PS. Just looked at your profile - love your sense of humour! 🙂

Message was edited by: John Cogdell - added PS

Biography, Expertise, Occupation - I thought they were mostly all tongue in cheek (but some may have been true - do you really use USB drives and Memorex DVDs?). 😉

Ha ha.....I believe you (but thousands wouldn't)!

Yes, you can do this, but you can only stretch up to 1 second (or 30 frames for NTSC) at a time.

To do this, you should see a small icon at both the lower right and lower left of your project clip. The icon looks sort of like a reverse and forward button on a tape recorder. This button will change the color of the Yellow Border to orange. You can now drag this orange handle for up to one second. You can repeat to get more than one second.