Behavior of video on timeline

I make small screen capture videos for my various projects, and have been struggling with the timeline behavior which in my opinion, is not optimal... The scenario is that, with any media one puts on the timeline, the default length is until the end of the timeline. If the timeline is 30 seconds and I put a 15 second video in it, the video is then showing until the end of the timeline. However, if I deselect "show until end", there is really no way to know the length of the video (unless, of course, you go to the properties of the video in Windows). If I just shorten it on the timeline, it's possible to crop the end of the video. 

My workaround has been to produce the audio within the video separately, so at least I can match the length of the video to the audio. It would be nice if, when one deselects "show until the end", the video length is adjusted to its actual length...