Transitions double 1st frame/drop last frame: a solution

Question

I have found that Transitions in iMovie 5 are problematic. The first frame in a Transition doubles and the last frame drops out. This is not noticeable in a slideshow but can be very noticeable in an exported video.
Transitions cannot be edited frame by frame unless one exports video out to a camera and then imports it back into iMovie. The original clips and transitions are now seamless clips. One can delete extra frames and then find and import the missing frames from original sources. HOWEVER, this process is incredibly frustrating and time consuming.
THIS IS WHERE THINGS GET INTERESTING.
To avoid the above, I thought I would add textless Titles over a few key clips and transitions where the glitching is most obvious. I had noticed that Titles longer than the clip they were inserted into, merge together the clip with its transition and following clip.
i.e.,
1. DEselect 'Over black' in the titles window.
2. Select a title format and then a length longer than the 'glitched' transition.
3. Split the clip so that the Title can be inserted.
4. Insert a TEXTLESS Title that spands the clip, transition and into the next clip.
5. Then edit out duplicate frames and insert missing frames from the the now 'single' clip.
STILL just a piecemeal. STILL labour intensive.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS MORE INTERESTING.
I tested this on a couple of clips and, LO AND BEHOLD, 'Title-merging' a clip with its transition and following clip results in the duplicated first frame of the transition DISAPPEARING and the previously dropped frame of the transition, REAPPEARING. A fix.
One could blanket a video with long textless Titles (i.e., 45 seconds at a time with Rolling Credits) to fix the transition glitches.
I know that this is not a great solution, but it does allow me to export video with the quality I need.
Is there a better solution? (I find it ironic that years later, iMovie 2.1.2 is still, for me, the most successful of all the iMovie applications.)

Answer 1

the duplicated and dropped frames move to the beginning and end of the added short (4 seconds, for example) texless title. Using a longer title (10 seconds, for example) fixed also this.
if I understand your original reply correctly, it is important that the blanket transition ends in the middle of a clip and not a transition.
In my tests I used a blanket title (did you invent this descriptive word?!) that spans some of the previous clip (I split it 1-2 seconds before the transition so I could add the blanket title), the transition and some (1-2 seconds) of the next clip.
If it ends in a transition, the transition plays and then the ORIGINAL clip plays, duplicating the first part of the clip.
I didn't quite follow. I just tried this with a 30 frame transition. Then I added a 1:15 blanket title 1:00 before the transition (so the blanket title ended in the middle of the transition). Result: The first frame of the blanket titles was duplicated and the last frame of the blanket title was dropped. Otherwise it played as expected.
shift select the clips to establish a total length of the video clips and them add a title that ends just inside the last clip.
Yes, I did just that to measure how long a title was needed. In my tests it seemed that it was important that the blanket title wasn't very short (<4 seconds) because then the problem frames were just moved to affect the title. Using a longer blanket title (10 seconds) seemed to fix the problem for both the transition AND the blanket title.
<div class="jive-quote">With a textless title blanketing an entire video, my COMPRESSION TIME to Quicktime is incredibly shortened (1/3 to 1/2 the time).
That's interesting. I've noticed that simple projects (i.e. not much cuts) export faster than real time to Full Quality .dv. But complex projects take MUCH longer to export as .dv. AFAIR this didn't matter in iMovie 1-4. Maybe the blanket title simplifies the relevant parts of the project?
[sigh] I wish we didn't need to be aware of the plethora of obscure gotchas and workarounds like this. I don't expect there to be an iMovie HD 5 update anymore. I guess some bugs will be fixed and some brand new bugs will be introduced in v6.
The same thing happened with iMovie 4 bugs. ...So this time I thought to quickly gather AND report all iMovie 5 bugs to Apple so they could quickly fix them during the first months. ...but it seems that the iLife team just isn't granted enough resources to fix them. Many known old bugs are again just described in the knowledgebase articles.