See my answer to your "fade tgitle text in and out' question.

or

There is a selection in the Preferences that you can check that will "automatically overlap multiple selected media when adding to time line" That way you can 'shift/select' a number of stills add them to the time line and they will automatically be crossdissolved for the predetermined amount of time.

I don't quite understand this. How can I control precisely how much overlap there is? VMS seems to be entirely drag oriented but it takes a lot of time that way.

In the preferences, you can set the standard overlap time up to thousands of seconds precise.

BTW, may I politely suggest that you first read the help file/manual and go through the tutorials, 'cause what you ask is pretty basic stuff...

Well I read the little Quick Start Guide that came with the software but nothing in it or the Help actually addresses my main question: how to precisely control the duration of anything -- not default values but individual events, transitions, etc.

As far as I can tell, the answer to everything is drag -- which, aside from being rather uncomfortable, is rather imprecise unless you blow up the timeline to the point that you have to scroll across the screen for every single slide.

Here is what you need to know:
Select the event you want to move very precisely.
Use the Numeric Pad for precise movements:
key 1 and 3 will move the event per 0.01 second, respectively to the left and to the right
key 4 and 6 will move the event per 0.03 second, respectively to the left and to the right

For setting exact length of any event, right-click on it and select 'properties'. In the Media tab you'll find 'length'.

Greets,
Ivan

"For setting exact length of any event, right-click on it and select 'properties'. In the Media tab you'll find 'length'."

I don't know what version you are using, but the whole point of my queries is that, in the copy of VMS8 that I'm using, there is no way discoverable way to directly input the length of an event. If it's possible in VMS9, that's a good enhancement. If it is a Vegas Pro - only feature... The shortcut keys will no doubt come in handy but...in most programs, "shortcut" applies to an explicit command exposed through the UI. I'm not sure why a new user would go looking for a shortcut for something that they have no way of knowing exists.

I have downloaded the manual for Vegas Pro as ritsmer suggested and hope it will help with future projects.

You're right about setting 'length' in properties: it doesn't work like that. My mistake.