ERROR -50 ... IMOVIE EXPORTING PROBLEMS. PLEASE HELP!

I have this problems too!

I found this message when I tried to export the video.

[ file audio buffer failed Error-50 ]

Now I can fix it by this method.

1.Click to select the sound file
2. then click at VOLUME locate above the video preview window. (see the attach photo below)

3.uncheck at button Automatically Improve Loudness locate on the left side.

4. Try export again!

ps ; I used iMovie 10.1.8 MacOS High Sierra 10.13.1

Hope this helps.🙂

I came across the same problem (error -50) with my project that has a combination of still pictures and movies. After some process of elimination, I was able to figure out a simple solution and get around the problem by finalizing the project three times (i.e. one after the other).

What seems to have happened was that iMovie first finalized my still photos at 1080P (took 3 hours) then second round finalized my moves at 720P (took 4 hours) and finally for the third time, took only 35 minutes to put the two together and complete the job.

Hope this help allbeit an old post.

Edmund

Error -50 stands for incorrect export parameter.

Try different export format, bit rate, or resolution.

See also: http://aeroquartet.com/movierepair/quicktime-errors

Regards,

Benoit

Hi

Error -50 paramErr Error in user parameter list

Can there be any external hard disks - if so How is/are it/they formatted ?

Must be Mac OS Extended (hfs) if used for Video.

UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange - works for most but not for VIDEO.

What this means in Your situation is above me.

• free space on internal boot hard disk? How much ?

Pictures

• in what format ? .jpg, .bmp, .tif, else ?

Audio

• from where/what format ? iTunes, .avi, .mp3, .aiff, else ?

Did You try to trash the "com.apple.iMovie.plist" file ?

Many users has not observed that there are TWO libraries.

• Library - at root level

• Library - in user/account folder - THIS IS THE ONE to look into (invisibly in Mac OS X.7.x)

from Luke Burns

I fixed the problem.. but it was very, very strange. I had a very long section for credits and set the line spacing to 1.0.. for some reason this caused it. I removed it, and it worked fine. I put it back, and I couldn't preview or play the video.

I don't know why that could cause that big of a problem, but it did..

Yours Bengt W

I've had the same issue last night when putting a project together for work. I had been working on it for days (evenings) and was up until 2AM finishing it off... ended up with a really good movie. But then I was absolutely gutted when I realised I could not convert it in to a movie clip due to this error -50 !

After quite a bit of time looking online for a solution (did not find one, even that I went through dozens of forums etc) I decided to see if I could get around it myself. In the end... it turned out to be quite simple. All it was.. was one single video I had in my project that had some sort of issue with it. All I had to do was find it and delete / replace it. Here's how I've done it:

On the Projects Library, I right clicked on my project and choose "Duplicate Project". This created an exact copy which I could play with to try to find the root of the problem, without losing the original.

I then opened the project copy and deleted one of the videos... then tried to Finalise it. It didn't work... so I deleted another one... tried to Finalise it... did not work... after doing this 4 or 5 times (deleting one by one) I managed to get my project to start Finalising!

So, I knew that last video I deleted was the one creating a problem... so I cancel the Finalise Project I had just started (as it was an incomplete project because I had deleted a whole load of videos from it)... then went back to my original/full project... deleted the one I knew was an issue and kept all others. I then did a few tweaks to compensate for the deleted video... clicked Finalise Project... and it worked!!!

I hope all this makes sense... it might be a bit of an effort but its certainly worth it.

Hope you can recover yours from the Trash and fix it !

Good luck...

😀

I had the same problem with a big project which used lots of time stretching. I attempted lots of solutions suggested on various forums, including creating more space, deleting the imovie cache, deleting plists, attempting exports in different formats, but nothing worked.

I also tried a similar technique to Didorx - made a test project and tried the different clips seperately to attempt to determine which was causing the problem. All clips exported fine.

In one forum a teacher had discovered (probably through a trial error like us) that the issue was caused by clips that were less than 1.5 seconds in length. I noticed that one of my clips was 1.6 seconds long, so I edited the project to remove this clip, and voila, it exported.

No idea why iMovie doesn't like short clips, but I suggest you edit/remove any clips shorter than 2 seconds and see if this works!

Yep short clips. I removed them and no error. Thanks AlibooDM

I had the same problem with -50 error.

The shortest clip that I had in my project was 4.8s length. The next shortest clip is 5.2s.

I deleted clip with 4.8s length and project exported well.

So be sure that you don't have clips shorter than 5s.

Very good troubleshooting method.

Well this is the most sensible debugging method I have seen described for the dozens of reports of this error on the forums.

However -- what absolutel rubbish of a product from Apple if this is true. I cannot export a project also with error code 50 no matter what I tried for export mode or parameters -- and my project is made up of dozens of small SECTIONS of larger imports and some photo inserts that run as overlays to the video (how can I sit on still photos for 5 seconds ?? talk about boring ... ) -- BECAUSE THAT IS WHAT I WANT to show ... I do not want long drawn out shots in my video - it will be boring as toast if I do that (it is a video of a production line, and the only way to really spice it up is with fast cuts and some picture on picture stuff). I also did a lot of time manipulation to shorten long dull stretches of putting a product together. Why would you create a product feature like time manipulation, allowing short clips etc. and invite users to use it ( because it is there, available and looks cool for my purpose) and then NOT support it on EXPORT ? Oh and let's not forget the clever error message too - so descriptive.

What kind of a company would make a product that cannot do fast cuts all through your project editing and previews them correctly but then can't export them anywhere afterwards ? Why is this not considered a bug and available as a fix after all these years (people in iMovie '09 and '11 complain of this).

Thank you so much Didorx, i followed exactly what you said and it worked perfectly! 🙂

thankyou but unfortunately it didn't help me. I'm using a mac pro and it's only 2 months old. I've deleted almost all of my movies and images but it's definitely not that. I have heaps of space. I've been getting the error -50 message. It won't export or finalise the clip. Imovie keeps shutting down. Is it because my clips are too small?

There are lots of fast cuts and slow cuts. They are all under 2 seconds in length :-( mffmmmmf :-((

I agree. It's really annoying!

ALTERNATIVE OPTION:

I have ran into the error 50 issue several times. This typically happens because I am repeating a lot of video, and or it has short clips usually less than 2 sec.

If your movie is long it will take forever to hunt down a single clip especially if you are Splitting and Trimming all the time.

My approach was to duplicate the project, in this case I think I made 5 duplicates.

My goal was to duplicate the entire movie and then delete the sections of the movie in my duplicate so that I was only dealing with a smaller segments. Next I tried to export the film, if it didn't export it was a lot easier to find the problem.

Now from here you would have to do this for each section and then create your movie from all of the created exports to piece it all back together again.

Painful, Yes, but easier on a large project to approach it this way than hunting for files endlessly.

Keep trying to Export every time you make a change. Export the parts that work, and your will filter down to the smaller sections and eventually find your problem(s).

I am switching to Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere, I can't handle this error with the amount of hours.

Apple has not fixed this in the past 5 years and I doubt they will moving forward. iMovie is basic, and once you get technical and too creative for this software you are probably going to run into these problems. Hence, taking the next step to a better software.

Good Luck

The way I got around this error was NOT to delete any short clips but instead

(1) Consolidate Media choosing to consolidate everything (media and events) - link here to info on how to do this: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2290

(2) Move project to another Hard Drive physically connected to the MAC choosing to move everything (media and events) - link here on how to do this: http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2289

Worked for me !!!