Duration of clips and transitions simplified

I spent hours researching the question, "Why does my duration time keep changing even after I have applied the time to all clips? I just want them to be 4 seconds long!" I was getting ready to pull my hair out! But, I finally found the answer!

You will see a change in duration time any time you add a transition or title in between clips. Do not worry. All it is doing is evening out the time your clip is shown on the screen. For example if you want all of your clips to be 4 seconds long and you add a transition that is 1 second long you will see that your clip has changed to 4.5 seconds. If you add a transition after your clip, you will now see that the clip is 5 seconds long.

To get a better understanding of this, start a new project with 5 photos. Set all of them to 4 seconds. Add one transition with 1 second. You will notice a change. Then add another transition. You will see how iMovie is calculating the "time on screen"

Hope this helps you from pulling your hair out.