how can I see the elapsed time in an imovie project

If you simply need to reference certain times in your finsished video, you can share your video using the Share menu. For example Share to iTunes or Share/Movie of Share/Export Using QuickTime.

Then view your movie in iTunes or using QuickTime Player and you can see the minutes and seconds.

If you need minutes, seconds, and frames, you can either go to final cut pro, or you can simply import this movie back into iMovie as an Event, and you can see the time by skimming with your mouse. (Click VIEW/PLAYHEAD INFO to see the time while skimming.)

Hi

The movie total duration is written under the movie.

But to know a specific frame - I can not do - except in a very amateurishly way - I would split the clip where I need to know exact hh.mm.ss.fs then I could read it when selecting next clip.

I love using Final Cut Express and Pro (prior to FC Pro-X as I know nothing about) - where this is orthodox and easy to read.

Yours Bengt W

YES You are 100%

But don't You think this to be a tedious way to do it. I would like to just point and read - but may be I'm alone.

As in old iMovie 1 to HD6 - and -

FinalCut Express

FinalCut Pro

Adobe Premiere

Media 100

and one can go on forever

It's fairly basic isn't it ?

Yours Bengt W

You are right it is tedious, but it is the design of iMovie to be a visual interface. You can visually pick the frames you need.

To use an edit decision list where someone else is telling you which frames to edit numerically could be considered a feature mostly of value to pros. Of course, I do not know why Apple did it this way.

I agree with Bengt W. There are many reasons, even in a simple movie, to want to know the timing of things. This is a surprisingly frustrating product. For want of timing information, you are requiring your users to pay $300?

In my situation, I took some video of a show (with the performers permission) with an iPad and an iPod. All I want to do is make a movie with one video as the main position with a series of cutaway clips from the other. It is incredibly frustrating to do this without knowing where you are within each clip.

When helpful and capable forum participants like we have here have to spend time explaining how best to make do with a product, it's a clear indication of a fault with the product. Now, I either have to spend extra time in iMovie making due with this crippled interface, or I have to spend time looking for an alternative product.

Consider this a feature request!

Amazing that this feature has been left off! I've not used iMovie for a few versions and have just come back to it. It's now useless! I've downloaded VideoPad instead. It may not look pretty, but at least it has all the functions you need. Apple must try harder. After all, what goes up must come down.

Okay wait I know this conversation was earlier in the year I am new to imovie. I actually went through the very tedious process of watching 149 raw video clips before having iMovie and noting, by time location the clip fragments were the person is saying something I want to be sure to extract from raw video to include in final video..... Now I am learning from this conversation thread that there is no way to DISPLAY time progression in imovies to help me locate the exact point in a clip I want? On youtube videos , itunes movies and so on it is simply a matter of placing your cursor and the time location appears. No such luck with imovies?

It's very handy when making an instructional movie and there is a need to refer to where a specific topic starts.

Yours Bengt W