Transitions and Timing

grdnangl wrote on 2/15/2009, 4:32 PM

I'm having trouble figuring out how to make each photo in my video show for 4 seconds, with a 1 second interval inbetween. I have gone to Preferences and set the still image length for 4 seconds and the cut to overlap conversion for 1 second. That's all fine and dandy when I add several photos at a time. But I am adding photos one at a time, picking them out from different folders from my media.

Now I just rearranged all my photos after I put the transitions in and overlaps and I cannot tell how much each photo will be showing on the screen.

Is there any easy way to do this? For instance, I may want to change some photos to stay on only 3 seconds (if they only have 1 person in the photo), and the group photos on for the 2 seconds.

Is there an easy way to see how long each photo is showing, and an easy way to change the time each photo displays?

It looks like the easiest thing is to make sure all of this is done BEFORE adding all my transitions, right? Do this at the very end - after all my moving around and changes are done?

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 2/15/2009, 6:01 PM

Firstly and most important ... play your video and watch the images. If some need to be on the screen longer then stretch them out longer. If some need to be shorter then make them shorter. Ignore the stopwatch ... do what looks & feels right. If that means that some pictures last 2.37 seconds and others last 6.18 seconds ... so be it. Occasionally get other people's opinions too. After you've watched it a few times you start losing the sense of what it's like to see it for the first time.

But, if you really want the timing to be clockwork instead of natural then i'd suggest zooming in until the timeline shows grey vertical dividers at 1-second intervals. Turn on snapping. It's now easy to drag a picture up on the timeline, line it up to one of the dividers, and count off seconds until the next transition starts.