Adjusting clips and transitions speeds??

Hi, sue,

It looks like you are talking about clips that are photos. If so the applicable term is duration, not speed. Speed refers to frames per second that photos do not have. Photos display for a specified duration. The shorter the duration the faster the photos appear to be displaying. When you add a transition it cuts into, or shortens the photo's duration. So you need to select the photo by clicking on it and then clicking on the icon in the toolbar at the upper right your screen that looks like a circle with an "i" in it. A little duration box will appear to the right. Enter a new duration for the clip in the box and then press the return key on your keyboard. The clip's duration will be set at the duration that you entered in the box. You can use the same procedure to change the duration of a range of photos that are adjacent to each other, by selecting them as a batch and using the "i" icon to set a new duration. With a range of photos you might have to change the durations before adding the transitions. If you know that you will be adding transitions you can increase the durations ahead of time.

With transitions you adjust their speed by adjusting their durations. Click (or double click) on the transition and a box will appear that lets you type in a duration. The shorter the duration, the faster the transition.

-- Rich

I am happy to help.

Here's another thing. After opening iMovie click on iMovie/Preferences from the menu bar at the top of the screen.

A preferences box will open like this:

Before you create a new project, you can pre-set the Photo duration and Transition duration from the preference box. That way you won't have to be changing them manually. In the Photo Placement box you also can set whether an imported Photo will be imported into the project with the Ken Burns effect or just as a regular still image. Again, the preferences need to be set before you create a new project, or they won't take effect. You always can override the preferences manually during the course of the project.

Have fun.

-- Rich