It's not a very problematic thing, but it's quite annoying. It's simple: when I set the default still duration (Final Cut Pro menu>User preferences>Editing tab>Still/Freeze Duration) to, say, 6 seconds, the imported files appear to have just 5 seconds. If I set it to 12 seconds, the stills will have 10 seconds.

I suppose that the program calculates the number of frames for the 25 fps timebase (that is, 6 seconds = 150 frames), but when the clip properties are assigned to the item, it assumes that the time base is 30 fps. So 150 frames = 5 seconds. The same 6 to 5 proportion is kept, no matter what duration you set in preferences.

I have had the same problem when importing motion templates, which is pretty annoying, as the duration is shortened, or worse, the end of the template is cropped.

Just another thing to add to the long list of bugs in FCP...

David,

You probably know this, but I think that that setting applies just to files like photoshop, not motion files. I just went through this myself with FCE and changed my still preference to 6 seconds from 10, and now when I import photos in the time line, they are all 6 seconds in length, which is what I wanted.

Jonathan