Wow, am I having problems with version 7.01. first, could not import a simple I movie hd project of less than five mins of movie. Second, crashed at least ten times will importing movie files from my hard drive. third, would crash while generating thumbnails and the final third of my clips were in gray, no thumbnail at all. This software sure seems to be very buggy to me! I am running this on a macbook, and just simple video clilps from my digital camera. I could not run a voiceover with any precision, and all I wanted to do was post a short clip up to my web gallery..
feed back appreciated.
Paul
ps. wonder if I would have better luck using a real minidv cam.
I had the same problem today too but I have the solution. Quit iMovie 08 first. Then, you need to go to the iMovie Events folder and delete the thumbnail folders of the offending clips. Restart iMovie and it will rebuild the thumbnails again. It takes a while if you have some large files. The problem should be resolved. I know, Apple really should fix this problem in the next update.
Thanks Patty Patty! That did the trick for me! Found this thread after hours of searching the forums and trying things to stop iMovie from crashing. Didn't think it was thumbnail related but tried your suggestion without much hope. Now I was able to complete a project and iMovie is rock solid!
I am not sure why it crashed in the first place. I remember I tried to import some video clips. When I switched between the projects and doing other things, I think iMovie crashed. Then, when I returned to the application, most of the previously imported clips turned gray. iMovie tried to re-create those thumbnails without any success. Finally, it crashed again - over and over again. The movie clips themselves were fine when I viewed the original .dv clips in their folders. I think the thumbnails were corrupted and iMovie went into an endless loop and decided to crash. This is a major bug in the software and it has happened to be rather frequently. I think I have the solution but hopefully Apple will fix that in future updates.
Perhaps the same problem. After a crash and movie recovery, some thumbnails (clips) remain gray, and none of the clips will respond to any commands- can't move to timeline, can't copy and paste, etc. This movie is for my son's school project, and he is frantic. Has put a lot of time into it.
I don't know where the iMovie event folder resides, so can't try the posted solution. Can someone help?
The iMovie event folder normally locates in your Movies folder unless you have selected a different one. Then, in the iMovie event folder, you will see the thumbnails folder where you can find the defective thumbnails. Hope that will work.
Patty Patty - you ROCK!!! Deleting the thumbnails fixed my problem. After 2 days on this forum and talking to Apple Care for over an hour with no solution, this finally worked. I had multiple gray thumbnails and thumbnails with the wrong video clip and then after a day of this I couldn't even start iMovie, it would crash as soon as I started it up.
Apple really needs to fix this. Thank you PattyPatty!!!
Thanks, Patty! I was hating iMovie 08 a lot when it first came out because it's really a completely new program. But I'm beginning to like to the way it does things. This corrupt thumbnail issue was one of my last big gripes. Thanks to you....I can get moving on some edits. Kudos!
Fantastic solution. I had the greyed out thumbnails/funky sound problem and deleting the thumbnails fixed my issue completely. Now the clip that had the problem (about 40 minutes long) has no issues and I can scroll the clip flawlessly! Thanks, Patty Patty!