Quote: The problem is that transition times are limited to 50% of the length of the clip. So if I want a two second fade, I have to set the duration of the picture clip to four seconds, so I end up with two seconds of freeze frame and then two seconds of fade. Is there any way of freezing the frame and staring the fade immediately?

Yes. Set your freeze frame to 1 second. After the freeze frame, add a fade effect and set it to .8 for duration. Add a black frame after the fade and set the duration to a couple of seconds. This should look like an instantaneous freeze frame to fade to black.

Quote: Another problem I've had is specifying the duration of clips and transitions. I can't specify any fraction of a second about 0.28 or 0.29. So I can do 4.00 or up to 4.29 but nothing between 4.29 and 5.00. It's very annoying.

In video editing, a second of video is split up into 30 frames (for US televisions) or in other words, 1/30 of a second for each "picture" of video. You need 30 of these to make one second of moving video. There is no fractional setting for PD7 or for that matter, any video editing software that I am aware of. Cutting a transition or clips into fractions between two frames of video (2/30 of a second) is rarely, if ever needed. The human eye wouldn't even notice such a small interval in duration.

Quote: A related problem is setting the default duration of transitions. I can't set the default duration properly from the Edit/Preferences/Editing settings. I want 1.25, but the closest I could get was setting "1.9" and that resulted in transitions of 1.27.

Here, we are talking about two different timing standards. One second in real time translates to 1.0 in video frames...and as mentioned before, there are 30 of them in one second of video. Hence, if you selected 1.9 seconds for your duration for a clip or transition, this would translate into about 1.27 in video frames. If you wanted one and a half seconds for your duration in real time (1.50 seconds), this would translate into 1.15 in video frames. Why? the ".15" means 15 frames, and this is exactly half of 30 frames, which is equal to half a second. The software is converting your real time duration into video frames, which is why you're not seeing the same numbers in your effects. It is approximating the video frame count from your request in real time seconds.