Slow down Far Far Away title in iMovie 10.1?

In the past I thought that all animated titles completed their animation within the duration set for the title, so, to slow them down one just had to prolong the title duration and vice versa. This still applies to Scrolling Credits but FarFar Away now seems to run at a fixed speed whatever the title duration - if it is very short it just fades out before the end. Since there are no other title controls and you can't retime titles I don't think it is possible to change the speed.

In FCP X 10.2.2 this title has a choice between Fixed (the default) and Automatic:

Fixed does what iMovie 10.1 now does (though you can adjust scroll speed) whereas automatic scales the speed to fit the title duration - what iMovie used to do. So it seems that the FCP default setting has somehow got into the latest version of iMovie.

Geoff.

There are quite a lot of us around 😀.

I was a bit surprised to see this post from you knowing that like me you are an FCP user. I suspect that the change was an unintended one. My first (superficial) impression of iMovie 10.1 was quite positive (not having actually tried editing with it) but from some of the recent posts here I have had to explore it a bit more and there are quite a lot of confusing changes. I think that FCP X is much more intuitive and actually easier to use.

Guys, I am struggling with this is well.

I have the movie already created and ready to go in iMovie 10.1 but this is my only sticking point. I can't believe I have the only version where this doesn't work. Should I get FCP X and try to recreate my movie there?

I'm downloading the free trial of FCP X right now. I hope it works better.

I figured out a work around - create a project with just the title, export it at the highest quality, then bring it back into your actual project and slow it down. It's a pain but it works...

Best work around ever!

Spend hours trying all manner of things to slow this part down.

This worked a treat - perfect

Thanks

Thank you - that saved a world of pain

Just as an aside - doing this and slowing it down does make the scrolling choppy; it's fine for an amateur movie, but you'll probably want to use FCP if you are doing more.

I accidentally happened onto the fix for this problem yesterday! First, open a new project in iMovie, select the Far, Far Away title, and drag it onto the iMovie workspace. Now you can adjust its speed the same way we used to in previous versions of iMovie, but you need to hold down the "Command" key while you do it! So hold down the "Command" key, place your mouse cursor at the end of the title clip and drag it...now, just like earlier versions of iMovie, the farther you drag it, the slower it will run. Build your title as its own project, making it the length you need in your movie, adding background, checking spelling, etc. Once its in your movie, you will not be able to alter it like you can a normal title. Once you're satisfied with your title, export the title as its own short movie onto your computer desktop. Open your movie project in iMovie, then import your finished title back into your original movie. Obviously, compared to making a normal title, this is a tedious process (if your title is a little too long, or too short, or something's misspelled, you can't fix it in your movie as you can a normal title...you have to go back to your "title project", fix it there, then re-export/import), but it works...the Far, Far Away title will run as slowly as you want, and it will run smoothly!

Ian...this is so frustrating! After I spent a week trying to make this work, I finally did it, and thought I knew exactly what I had done. After seeing your reply, I just went back into iMovie and tried to recreate the title again, and I can't get it to work either! Bottom line is I did something that worked...I have a great title that works perfectly...so it is possible. I did use the Command key, but I must have done something prior to that for it to work. I'll keep working on and if I figure it out, I'll re-post.

Thanks.

Your comments helped my son on his school project.

However, it does take quite a bit of time to create the new "Title project" and import it.

Too bad Apple is removing functionality from iMovie and FCP is so expensive now.

HI,

i managed to slow down the Far Away title after struggling with it quite a bit.

After reading that someone tried pressing the Command key while stretching the timeline, i tried that too but it didnt work for me, so i started pressing each one of the keys on the bottom row of my keyboard, each time while while stretching the timeline, and it didn't seem to make any difference either.

Then I tried pressing Command and the minus key ( - ) while the title was scrolling, and it slowed down, so it did it again and it slowed down some more...

I'm not sure which of all the above combinations worked, but I finally got the scrolling speed down to a reasonable rate.

I hope this helps...