Movie Won't Play Smoothly: Hiccups, Freezes, or Stops

I would bet that pretty near every iMovie user has had the skipping problem on playback at one time or other.

Apparently it is related to the number (not size) of audio clips and effects in your movie. The number varies from computer to computer.

Here are some things you can try:

1. Export your movie to your desk top as a High Quality Quicktime movie, then import it back in a one long clip. (Makes it more difficult to edit, though.)

2. Eliminate the number of audio clips by exporting the audio to your desk top as an .aiff file, and then importing it back in to iMovie as one long clip. (Again, makes it more difficult to edit.)

3. Avoid multiple overlapping audio clips and sound effects, even if the underlying audio clip is muted.

4. Set iMovie Playback permissions to Standard for smoother playback. (Play back video quality will be a little lower.)

5. In iMovie Preferences/Playback, uncheck the box that centers the playhead on play back.

6. Do your playback on small screen rather than full screen.

7. Toggle back and forth between small and large screen when the playback hangs up.

Make sure your Quicktime is updated currently (version 7.2)

If you have any Quicktime or other plug-ins that might be interfering, move them to a new folder and see if that helps.

I read Karl Peterson's excellent post, too. The stutter happens on my computer with as little as 8 or 9 clips, and sometimes less if I am overlapping sound effect clips with the audio.

Fortunately, the problem seems to vary from project to project, at least with with me. Some projects don't have stutter at all. But the stutter is only on playback. It won't happen in your final product.

You can try editing your movie in segments, each in a different iMovie project, and then at the end combining them all together into one iMovie project. Make sure you have at least 20GB of free space to work with, and close all other programs while you are editing.

A sound clip can be any snippet of sound. Doesn't have to be a whole song. iMovie works best with audio in the .aiff format, 16 bits, not 12 bits. (But 12 bit audio won't cause stuttering, just gets out of sync after 20 minutes or so.)

I don't know of any software that addresses the stuttering problem, but others on this forum may have some suggestions.

iMovie should be able to handle your music videos just fine. But, I agree that the stutter problem, when it occurs, can be annoying.

Hope this helps.

Hi S

Did You try to delete iMovie pref file. This can help.

As already said: Many audio-clips the most usual couse to stutter - mix down to one.

Yours Bengt W