iMovie transitions and timing

[weldon]

I have an iMovie that is basically a slide show (a bunch of photos of graduating seniors). I threw it together at the last minute because the parents got pictures to me late. One of the things that I didn't do was drop cross-dissolve transitions between the photos. I've already got the music timed to different sequences of pictures. When I drop a cross dissolve between two pictures, it actually makes the whole sequence shorter and I can't figure out how to compensate.

I assume a 1:01 transition takes 1 second and 1 frame from each of the two clips and overlaps them. This would shorten the overall sequence by 1:01 because the second clip is effectively being moved forward by 1:01 to overlap with the last 1:01 of the first clip. Does that sound right?

I tried lengthening each photo clip from 5 seconds to 5:15 so that a 1:01 transition would only shorten the sequence by 1 frame. It still seems to come up short.

Does anyone know of a foolproof way to compensate for the time changes that a transition will introduce?

 

[puckhead193]

I'm not sure if i understand your question, but you can change the lenght of the picture... say have it shown for 3 seconds instead of 5 or whatever.... and then add the transitions...
Does that many any sence... or am in my own little world.

 

[weldon]

Puckhead,

it makes perfect sense. I tried doing this by adding :15 frames to each still picture and then adding a transition that was 1:01 I figured that this would equalize out to be just 1 frame longer. I was wrong.

I'll keep playing with it. If I have to, I'll just redo the music to the new timing.

Weldon

 

[xsedrinam]

Since you mention the project is mainly slides, would Keynote or PowerPoint serve your purposes better? Just a thought. If you have some video and want a 720x480 rendering, I undertand. But it seems like your timing issues could be more easily addressed running it in something other than iMovie.
X

 

[rjphoto]

Weldon, I've been through this several times.

Get a rough est. of how much longer the photos need to be and re-import them but change the length of a still image in the prefs first to match your new calculation. It beats the heck out of changing the length of every image.

This will make the length of the "Video Track" look too long to begin with, but once you start adding the transitions the audio and video tracks will get closer together.

If you come up short on the video trim some audio out or fade the tracks a little closer.

And don't forget, you can always hold an image a little longer to make things match at the end and let the music trail off after the last fade out.

Hope this is not too late.

 

[blqman989]

IMOVIE TRANSITIONS

HOW DO YOU USE MULTIPLE TRANSITION IN IMOVIE AT ONCE WITH OUT HAVE TO ADD EACH DIFFERENT TRANSITION INTO THE MOVIE. OR RANDOM TRANSITIONS THRU THE WHOLE MOVIE WITH OUT TO ADD EACH ONE ONE BY ONE.I FOUND OUT HOW TO ADD THE SAME TRANSITION TO ALL THE CLIPS