Q: Images/stills turn black in iMovie since El Capitan upgrade

berryday18; Just to be sure you are aware - iMovie v8 (or v9) is NOT compatible with El Capitan. Unless you have a real need or reason to upgrade to El Capitan I would not recommend it.

iMovie 10 is way different than iMovie 9 and you would be facing a serious learning curve..

Conversion of iMovie 8 (or 9) files seems to work okay but in the process would take up a lot of HD space.

You might consider upgrading to iMovie 9 as it has a few more features.

That's my opinion, others may reply in the next few days.

Rich Rydalch:   Thanks for your response.  I was beginning to come to the same conclusion.  My wife has ordered a new iMAC.  I may take her old one and use it to do iMovies to hopefully avoid a bunch of problems.  Just can't believe Apple is effectively doing away with iMovie.  That's always been a big draw to Apple computers.  Thanks again.

That's exactly what I did. I had 2 older iMacs and upgraded one to El Capitan and kept the old one for just in case I want to go back to iMovie v9 for some reason. I was really unhappy when I realized that the advertising that Apple has done about being able to run both iMovie 10 and iMovie 9 on the same computer is TOTALLY FALSE with El Capitan.

After working with iMovie 10 for the past couple of months I quite like some of the features (like background sharing and a few other features). But it really works my older Macs (Macbook Pro mid 2009 and iMac early 2009) to death. I find myself restarting quite often. iMovie 10 seems to bog down those older Macs after importing video. I am in the process of getting a newer MacBook Pro. I hope it works better on iMovie 10.

for me Imovie does not work any longer since installation 10.1.1 release. It worked with previous one. I have a MacBook Pro  with OS X El Capitan 10.11.3

Thks for your help to solve this trouble. Rgds

Hello,

I have a New Mac Book Pro with level OS X El Capitan 10.11.3 et Imovie 10.1.1. Since I installed the last released in january 2016 Imovie doesn't work anylonger. I am looking for help. Before installation of Both releases it worked perfectly. Buying a new MacBook Pro won't change your problem.

I think you are more likely to get help if you start a new thread since your post doesn't seem to be related to the black image problem.  You will need to give much more information on what exactly happens when you try to run iMovie 10.1.1.

Edit - i see you have.

Actually buying a new MacBook Pro DID solve my problem. As stated in my comment, "But it really works my older Macs (Macbook Pro mid 2009 and iMac early 2009) to death. I find myself restarting quite often. iMovie 10 seems to bog down those older Macs after importing video.". I now have my newer MacBook Pro and iMovie 10 just sings (as do all my other apps). Apps open in 3 to 4 seconds now.

I didn't even install iMovie 9 on my new machine as I am now comfortable with iMovie 10 and will only use my older Mac to archive my video files.

BTW, the latest update of iMovie 10 solved the problem of black images on photos with a width over 3600 pixels.

Hello,

When I Bought my MacBooK Pro Retina Oct 2015 level Imovie was 10 and It worked perfectly with OS X El Capitan installed. Since I installed the 10.1.1 release  which was recommanded, it does not work anylonger. I mean : I open Imovie, get first screen on which you choose create new projet, then new screen to give a name to your new film and at this point Imovie failed with following message : "Operation could not terminated. No information is available about the problem.

I enjoyed very much Imovie and I would like to get it back working !!! Thks for help and best regards

PS : OS X El Capitan Level is : 10.11.3

I have installed new releases of OS X El Capitan et Imovie on same day. I don't know if the problem I got with Imovie comes from the new Imovie Release or the new OS X El Capitan release ????

Hello,

When I Bought my MacBooK Pro Retina Oct 2015 level Imovie was 10 and It worked perfectly with OS X El Capitan installed. Since I installed the 10.1.1 release  which was recommanded, it does not work anylonger. I mean : I open Imovie, get first screen on which you choose create new projet, then new screen to give a name to your new film and at this point Imovie failed with following message : "Operation could not terminated. No information is available about the problem.

I enjoyed very much Imovie and I would like to get it back working !!! Thks for help and best regards

PS : OS X El Capitan Level is : 10.11.3

I have installed new releases of OS X El Capitan et Imovie on same day. I don't know if the problem I got with Imovie comes from the new Imovie Release or the new OS X El Capitan release ????

What happens if you don't try to create a new movie project but try to open an existing one?  Or if you use the 'Media' tab to see your events?

If none of this is working properly I think you need to trash iMovie and re-download from the App Store.

iMovie 10.1.1 should be working fine with El Capitan.  If you previously had a version of iMovie earlier than 10.1 you will have found that there is quite a change in the user interface

Hello GeeD?

Thanks for your help.

I cannot test what you suggest because I don't keep my projets. In fact previous Imovie level  was 10.1.

First question : If I trash Imovie which was installed when I bought my MacBooK Pro and I reload from Apple store, would have I to pay for it ???

Another point : My son who has the same MacBooK pro retina with same releases for Imovie and El capitan  gets no problem. It seems it comes from my MacBooK Pro and not a general problem. I did a search on my terminal and got following result : user differs on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd" should be 0, user is 244 and Group differs on "private/var/db/displaypolicyd" should be 0, user is 244

unfortunately I do not understand anything about that and I do not know what to do with it ??? Do you think this result is linked with my trouble ?

Thks for help and best regards.

Fmon45

"If I trash Imovie which was installed when I bought my MacBooK Pro and I reload from Apple store, would have I to pay for it ???"

No you should be able to re-download from the App Store for free.

I am not knowledgeable on the second point to give a reliable answer but it is quite possible that it a configuration problem on your system rather than iMovie application corruption that is behind the problem.  Do you have any other applications behaving strangely?

Geoff.

After months of total frustration and reviewing several different Support Communities threads I finally found this posting  https://discussions.apple.com/message/23649165#23649165  that describes how to reinitiate iMovie 10 so that you can import and convert iMovie 9 events and projects.

Ever since I upgraded to El Capitan, I have not been able to complete a very large project that had almost 100 photos and pdf files in addition to many 50+ year old home movies.  I am talking about a family history project that I have been working on for over a year. Every photo and pdf file was black when playing the movie back in iMovie 9 or even when exporting it to the MV4 format.   I even wrote a letter to a senior Apple executive asking for an engineering fix.

I can now finish my project in iMovie 10, even though I prefer working in the iMovie 9 environment since it is just easier to use especially with the key stroke shortcuts. iMovie 10 is similar to Apple's Final Cut Express that I had attempted to use several years ago but gave up since iMovie 9 is so much easier to use.

I hope to be able to continue to use iMovie 9 when I am not using still photos but I have a feeling that with each OX upgrade it may not be possible. Perhaps Apple may fix the black photos in iMovie 9 but I am not optimistic.

I did not read over all eight pages of responses, but in case this is useful to anyone and has not already been communicated: I found this discussion http://superuser.com/questions/19899/mac-os-x-easiest-free-non-quicktime-pro-app lication-for-converting-numbered and a link to this script http://macscripter.net/viewtopic.php?id=25547 which converts still images to a quicktime movie which then seems to be easily used by iMovie, unlike the stills which for us turn up as black.

This at least seems to have given a workaround to my son who is of course doing all his assignments at the last minute, so now he can add some stills to his iMovie 9.08 project running under El Capitan. I did not want to have hime try the latest version of iMovie and have him lose backwards transfer to his Mac OS X 10.7 machine as well as possibly having a different interface.

Outstanding.  It's a bother to have to work around something that should be working directly.  But this is as about a simple a solution as you could want.  Thanks.