Stills in FCPX

In FCP7 I could select 1000 jepg stills and reduce the length of each to one or two frames. FCPX (Ver.10.3.4 on OS El Capitan) doesn't seem to allow that. Has someone figured this out?

Dale

Hi Dale
There are several ways to change the duration of still images, both on importing and in the Timeline.
The default duration for importing stills is 4 seconds, I believe??? (Been a long time since I had the default set-up in FCPX, so hope memory serves me right ;-p )

Importing

To change this duration go to FCPX Preferences>Editing>Still Images and there is a editable window. If you just use the up/down arrows I think you can only change down to 1 second. If you double click on it, you can numerically change to sub I second using the decimal point. This will affect the photos placed on the Timeline. (Browser doesn't matter here)

Please note that your project frame rate plays a part here in converting to how many frames a photo will create on a Timeline. If you choose .5 (point 5) seconds for still editing and add a photo to the Timeline for a 30fps project, you will get 15 frames vs 30 frames for a 60fps Project. .03 will give you 1 frame photo in 30fps project.

Timeline

In the Timeline you can select 1 or more photo clips and change the duration using the Modify>Change Duration menu item or after selecting the clips you can use the shortcut Control+D keys. This will open up a window where you can type in frames, seconds, minutes, hours. You can select all your photos at once and change all durations. Here first numbers typed are frames, next set are seconds and FCPX will automatically add the period separator.

Make sure in the Media Importing window you have selected the viewer that includes either, "Videos and Photos" or "Photos" only, otherwise the default is to see video only clips for import. If using the Media Import Browser icon you will go into Photos so this doesn't apply, just for importing from camera card, drives, etc….

You can also use a different app to edit photos and then create a slideshow and import that. I often do this so that I can have more options and better editing abilities. A slideshow will just be a single video clip on import.

By the way, you can also change the duration of transitions in Preferences the same way. Double clicking allows greater options for duration than using the up/down arrows. This will apply to any transitions you apply in the Timeline.

Hope this helps, Greg