Section B.5. Photo Problems

B.5. Photo Problems

iMovie HD's photo features are, in general, a delightand they let you get mileage out of iMovie even if you don't own a camcorder. But you may encounter some rough edges.

B.5.1. Can't Change the Duration of a Still Photo

iMovie distinguishes between still photos and still frames , of the sort that you capture using the Edit Create Still Frame command. Moreover, it differentiates between photos that exhibit the Ken Burns effect and those that dont.

It's so complicated, you practically need a cheat sheetand here it is.

• To change the duration of a Ken Burnsized photo (imported from iPhoto or from the hard drive), click the clip and then use the Duration slider (or Duration box) in the Photos palette. Click Update.

• To change the duration of a still frame, double-click it. Change the duration in the Clip Info box.

• To change the duration of a non Ken Burnsized photo, use either method: the Duration slider in the Photos palette, or the Clip Info box.

B.5.2. Ken Burns Accelerates Too Much

When the Ken Burns effect zooms in on an image, the clip sometimes appears to accelerate. There's a pause at the beginning of the clip, then the zooming goes faster and faster, all the way to the end. Most of the time, you probably want, if anything, a deceleration, so that the zoom comes to rest gently at the end of the magnification.

You can't eliminate this acceleration, but you can minimize it. These solutions rely on eliminating the pause at the start of the clip, which makes the zooming look smoother:

• Zoom less. A gentle zoom is usually better anyway.

• Add a Cross Dissolve transition before the Ken Burns clip; the transition covers the pause at the beginning. (The length of the pause depends on the duration of the clip and amount of zoom.)

• Set the Ken Burns duration a second or two longer than you actually need. Then, after the clip is finished rendering, crop out the first part of the clip by dragging its left edge to the right.

B.5.3. Ken Burns Zoom Always Shows 1.00

When the Ken Burns checkbox is turned off, it can look like the zoom is stuck on 1.00.

You'll see this situation when two conditions exist: First, the Ken Burns checkbox is turned off when you import a photo; second, the Ken Burns zoom setting is greater than 1.00. For this example, suppose it's 1.48.

When you click the Apply button, the zoom slider immediately jumps to 1.00, making you think that the image was imported with a 1.00 zoom instead of 1.48. That impression is only reinforced when you click the imported clip and see that the zoom slider still says 1.00. (Ordinarily, iMovie HD displays the zoom that was used to import the image when you click the resulting clip.)

In fact, though, the imported clip was imported correctly. These are all just cosmetic bugs . You can prove it by importing the image a second time using a 1.00 zoom, and comparing the two.

B.5.4. iPhoto Slideshow Fails to Import Video

Sometimes, a strange thing may happen when you try to drag a slideshow from iPhoto into iMovie HD: iMovie HD imports the song but skips the video.

In that situation, you've probably selected a copy-protected song, bought from the iTunes Music Store, as background music for the iPhoto slideshow.

If you have QuickTime Player Pro, open the iPhoto-exported movie, remove the audio track, Save, and try importing again. If you don't have QuickTime Player Pro, return to iPhoto, remove the song, export to a new movie, and try again.

Remember, you can always import the iTunes song directly into your iMovie HD project.