Image disappears after deleting an animation?

Edit Subject

Yeah this is somewhere between "bug" and "supposed to be that way even though it's totally unexpected so sorry about that" ;)

What's going on is that when you delete an animation, we always just leave things however they are to the left of that animation. That is, before they started changing as a result of the animating property. In this case, the animating property is "opacity". So, when you get rid of the fade in... it never fades in. It stays faded out. Totally transparent. The image is there, just invisible! If you open the properties panel and look a the Opacity, you'll see it set to 0, and you can adjust it back up.

So while that might make some logical sense, the bottom line is that it's still very confusing why we don't do what you obviously intended when you delete that fade in, so we'll have to find some way to do the right thing.

In the mean time, I suggest using the fade in transitions instead of the animations. The behave like you'd expect and they're easier to get right on the beginning/end of your jpeg. The only advantage of the animations (by comparison) is that they can be placed anywhere on the clip, such as right in the middle, or you could have a fade in, out, in, out, in thing going on all on one clip. Transitions are just for the ends.