iMovie 3 & still photo issues

[hawkgx at planetkc.com]

I've been watching a friend suffer through iMovie 3. Makes me glad I have
not *upgraded* to it myself.  Here's a couple of issues/questions we have
about it so far:

1) The Ken Burns Effect. Is there an easy way to make the iMovie
application default to NOT applying the Burns effect to a still photo
you've imported?  My friend was getting exasperated because every JPEG he
imported, started rendering with the Burns effect applied.  We discovered
that if you reset a still photo's properties... i.e. remove the zoom
settings, then each photo imported after that inherited the latest
settings. What a PITA! I can foresee just importing the first still,
re-setting its properties, and THEN importing the rest of my photos so
they'll inherit the *non-Burns effect*, but it still seems like a lousy
approach.

2) On the subject of still photo rendering... we noticed each still photo
begins rendering after it's imported.  Someone on the Apple discussion
boards speculated that iMovie is creating a reference file of each still
photo in order to deal with it more efficiently.  Anyone have the scoop on
why iMovie is rendering each still photo as it is brought in?

3) Re: changing clip duration:  We just finished importing 2 JPEGs onto the
clip shelf. The first one began rendering so we hit command-period to stop
it. We could then double-click the clip and change the duration in the Clip
Info window.  The second photo we let render completely. When we viewed the
Clip Info, the file size went from approx. 120k to 17mb.  Also, after
rendering we could see no way to change to the still clip's duration.

Any suggestions, complaints or comments about any or all of these issues is
appreciated.
Randy

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