Just learning iMovie & after much research in help & online still issues...

Question

I've tried to find my answers in help & search here as well with little luck.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
I'm making a photo montage (a 1/2 hour slide show w/ music in the background) for my Grandmother's 90th birthday. I'm really struggling with the following:
1. Transitions
I'm using both a fade-in & fade-out for every picture as the 2 transitions together seem smoother to me. I want my total duration to be about 5:30 seconds with a :30 fade in and a :30 fade out. I'd expect total picture time then to be about 4:30 once you account for transitions. But when I add a 5:30 picture (actually 5:29 - imovie seems to default to a :29 ending rather than 30) and then add both the fade-in & fade-out, my picture time ends up being 4:03! Why isn't it closer to 4:30???? If I try to up the total picture time to 6:00 that doesn't do the trick either! HOW DO I FORCE MY PICTURE VIEW TIME TO BE 4:30?
2. Titles
For some pics I add a title to display for 3 seconds of the 4:30 picture display. But once I add a title I can't edit it. I have to delete it & recreate it - what gives?
3. Themes
I've added some themes to the beginning and between sections of my montage. But once I create a themed item (like the montage opener) I can't edit it! I'd have to recreate the whole thing if I want to change wording. I must be doing something wrong?
SINCERE THANKS FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE! I'M IN OVER MY HEAD HERE I THINK & GRANDMA'S PARTY IS NOT FAR AWAY!
Tricia
iMac 5, 1   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  
iMac 5, 1   Mac OS X (10.4.9)  

Answer 1

Tricia,
I can imagine how frustrated my 90-yr-old grandmother would get if every time she was about to figure out what was in the picture, it changed. You're dad has a good point. It's probably better to err on the side of leisurely. (See how much more appealing it is when you call it leisurely instead of slow? lol)
Since you're open to suggestions I'll tell you why I like the Overlap transition so much. It looks very much like Cross Dissolve, and gives a soft change from one slide to the next. But unlike Cross Dissolve, which shortens the playing time of your movie, Overlap is one of the few transitions that does not. It makes the math much easier. If you had, say, 7 seconds per photo, with a 1 second overlap, you still can do your calculations based on 7 seconds per photo. You'd get a nice, leisurely pace with soft transitions than don't induce eye strain. If you're adding a music track to your movie, you could use those fade outs where each song ends. If the song helps to divide the sections of the movie, that is.
One last idea. If the photos are already assembled in an iPhoto album, you could create an extra feature to go on your DVD. Once you are ready to place your iMovie project into iDVD, you could add an iDVD slideshow with the same photos. It would be different from your more produced slideshow that you are creating in iMovie. You can only choose 1 slide duration (or complete manual control), 1 transition type, and no Ken Burns. But what you can do is have the next-slide arrows show onscreen, so that a viewer can manually click forward and backwards through the photos. That way, when the party is over, the folks can sit down with a remote control and click through the iDVD slideshow manually as they take a walk down memory lane. And Grandma can take as long as she needs to focus and remember the significance of each precious photo.
I haven't ventured into the themes in iMovie, so I can't answer that question without further experimentation.
Have fun and happy 90th to Grandma!