Section B.6. Photo Problems

B.6. Photo Problems

iMovie'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.6.1. Can't Edit Ken Burns Photos

Suppose you import a photo and apply the Ken Burns panning/zooming effect (Section 9.3).

Later, you try to edit the Ken Burns effect, changing its zoom, pan, or duration settingsand iMovie doesn't apply the change.

That's because of a bug in iMovie 6: When you import an image, the iMovie Trash bulges by about 117 KB. The program has just put your original photo into the iMovie Trash. If, later, you empty the iMovie Trash, iMovie no longer has the original copy from which to calculate the new Ken Burns settings.

(This bug applies only to photos that you import while the Ken Burns checkbox is turned on.)

The solution: Either don't empty the iMovie Trash until the project is complete, or drag the discarded photo out of the iMovie Trash to the Clips pane.

B.6.2. Imported Photos Show Grey Horizontal Lines Of Static

Photos from certain camera models arrive with horizontal lines of static.

The workaround is to edit the photos in iPhoto before importing them to iMovie. Cropping a bit in iPhoto usually does the trick.

B.6.3. Red Tint When Importing Images with Ken Burns Effect On

BMP imagesthat is, files with a .bmp extensionacquire a red tint when imported with the Ken Burns Effect checkbox turned on.

The solution is to convert such files to JPEG format using Preview (or some other graphics program) before importing to iMovie.

B.6.4. 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 Photo Settings 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.6.5. iPhoto Slideshow Fails to Import Video

Sometimes, a strange thing may happen when you try to drag a slideshow from iPhoto into iMovie: iMovie 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 project.