Q: Transition timing in iMovie 10

typing in the time field does not work. only goes less than 1.0 not more.

This is crazy these conversations have been going on since 2013 and its not fixed.

You have to go into the precision editor for this to work and then (as i recall, I'm not using it now) drag the ends. It is somewhat wonky. The thing about all this is, the documentation is crap, for ipad stuff you have to go online to find help.  I'm sure somewhere there was some release notes but who knows where. Now apple seems to be trying to make a transition within a transition. They were transitioning even their pro apps to an ipad/imovie project / event oriented thing where all the apps access a central media browser with the cutesy looking window swapping, function icons etc.  now that Jobs is gone they seem to be going back towards a neater, sharper edged interface look, but who can keep up with any of this.

mike

I think you are right, to my knowledge Apple have consistently ignored all this...They appear to just not care the silence is worrying! Indeed they seem to have lost their way and I'm sure if he was still around Jobs would have been so annoyed about this?

Maybe the new lady from Burberry won't be afraid to kick *** when she arrives???

Hi,

i also struggled a lot with this issue that the transition time seems to be aleatory. Sometimes it seems to add more than 1 sec, sometimes not, but not always depending on the length of the clip. I tried all solutions mentioned here, but none really worked for me.

I want to suggest one which finally solved my problems. I have latest IMovie on Yosemite.

As mentioned i tried all solutions described on the forum here and managed in some cases to add transitions of 2-5 sec, which was sufficient. Still there were lot of transitions which wouldn't change at all, whatever i would do, they would stay at 1 sec.

Then i delete the 1 sec transition and simply drag and drop another transition of 5 sec from another place. Then it would accept it here with 5 sec as well. Now creating a new transition in the old place where i dragged would allow same value which was before, like 5 sec. Now i have at least two 5 sec transitions. And so on, with all of them. I had the feeling that imovie memorizes the transition time between clips with whatever initial value and wouldn't allow to change that unless drag drop from another place with higher value, which only would kind of replace this memory.

Hope this works for some of you.

Thanks for that creative solution.  What I find interesting is that I can change the transition time duration only if I place the transition either before the first clip or after the last clip in my event - I am always able to change the duration time only when the transition is in one of these two locations.  If I attempt to change the duration for a transition between clips in the middle of the video, it will not change from 1 second.  So now with your solution, I create a transition before the first clip then alter its duration successfully and drag it over to the location I want between two middle clips.  I can repeat this as many times as I wish, then go back and create a beginning transition of my liking to stay in that location.  To call this laborious is clearly an understatement.

Yes Apple, you have really let us down on this issue.  I posted regarding this transition duration problem myself more than a year ago and spent numerous phone call time with Apple Care reps but obviously there is no wish to rectify a problem which many have raised.  Hopefully, not a sign of a new direction for a company from which I first purchased an Apple //c way back in 1983.

I'm having the same problem.  I know this is delayed

I have found that this issue occurs if you have a "title" or text element in the clip adjacent to the transition. If you placed any text or wording in the clip, try sliding that text over so that it's not near the beginning or end of the clip. Once I move the title element over, I am able to change the duration of a transition from 1 second to 3 seconds, etc.

Transitions TIME and IMOVE 10.1

I finally figured out this out.. here is the work-around on putting custom time on transitions.  We all know the default is 1 sec and sometimes IMOVIE it will not allow it to be changed.     Now if the clip is too short, then you can not change it- that should make sense to all of us.  BUT if the clip is of reasonable length and it still does not allow you to get away from the 1 second, then you can change it this way. 

When you have both clips on the time line,,,,, crop the end of the 1st clip by say 5 to 10 seconds,,, then crop the beginning of the 2nd clip  by also 5 or so seconds.....  THEN  make the transition time change from 1 second to desired time... say 5 seconds.   THEN..... go back and lengthen your clips back to the original (or desired) length on the time line.   SO-  Crop both clips / change time / restore clips.  All on timeline. 

This worked for me and I had to show tech support since they did not know.    I just switched to mac a week ago to get away from MS work-arounds..... please tell me it that it will get better.    Hope this helps someone.

awesome this helped! not the most effective way, but an easy work around Thank You !

The only method that worked for me on Imovie 10.1.1 is the following:

Get the movie edited with all the transitions points set up but don't place them yet.  Decide how long you want each one to be.     Let's say that you want all of them to be 3 seconds, but one to be at 4 and a fade to black at the end to be 5 seconds long.

Go to Preferences (under the top iMovie menu) and set Transitions default to be 3 seconds.   Now place all of your three second transitions.

Then go to Preferences again and change it to 4 seconds.  Place your one 4 second transition.

Finally for the fade to black at the end, go to Preferences and set the default length to 10 seconds for your 5 second fade to black.   This is because there is no clip after the transition so only 1/2 of the transition time is used.   This would also apply if you are using a transition at the beginning of your movie.

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much Stevvenwu1

My issue with only having transitions for 1.0 seconds has been resolved by your help via the help of Apple Care advisor, and the manual way to adjust lengh.

Now, the transitions work ok, and the overlapping is lovely to work with.

Kindest regards

Simon

three years on using latest imovie on ElCapitan and still can't change transition length. Transitions should not in my opinion steal time out of adjacent clips, they should add time into the movie as specified by the user.  well they would in a well designed app.  Apart from that imovie is very useful.