Single Black Frame at end of Cross Dissolve

Has anyone else encountered this problem?

I have placed a cross dissolve between two pictures, both of which have a Ken Burns effect applied, and at the end of the dissolve is a single frame of solid black. It doesn't matter how long I make the transition. However, it doesn't seem to do it to a picture that DOES NOT have the Ken Burns effect applied. I would really like to utilize the pan and scan features of the Ken Burns effect so removing it would not be an option. Any ideas or solutions?

iMac (20" Intel Duo Core), Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on May 7, 2009 8:04 PM

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29 replies

May 15, 2009 5:26 PM in response to Rich839

The black frame is in the transition so removing it will remove the problem but will also remove the transition itself which is what I want to keep. My original intent was to split the clip and remove it that way but iMovie would not allow me to split a transition. I just used Crossover instead which basically does the same thing. The funny thing is that I used the Cross Dissolve transition later on in the video and did not get the black frame. Weird!

May 15, 2009 7:21 PM in response to Jonathan Mills

Try trimming off a couple of frames from each of the clips on each side of the transition. Then reinsert the transition. I really doubt that the black frame is within the transition itself -- at least, I have never seen that. That fact that it doesn't appear in the cross dissolve transition used later in the video would indicate that the black frame is related to the clip itself rather than the transition. If that doesn't work, then switch to the Overlap transition, as I think that you alreaedy did, which gives almost the same effect.

May 18, 2009 12:26 AM in response to Rex Neff

I'm hosed if there isn't a solution to this problem. I'm 2/3 finished with a paid slideshow for a graduation party in two weeks. After weeks of working on this project, TONIGHT the single black frame began appearing in every single transition I try. (Except fade in and fade out, yuck).

I have used cross dissolve and overlap for the entire project. As of tonight, overlap shuts down imovie immediately, and the black frame of death is in every other transition I try.

PLEASE someone, is there a fix? You can't remove a single frame from a transition. The black frame is DEFINITELY IN THE TRANSITION, not the ken burns'd clip.

Thanks, I hope to get an answer... Tracy

May 18, 2009 4:16 AM in response to snaildix

Hi snaildix - obviously something is corrupting your project! Is your project a complicated one with many crops, transitions, effects, text overlays, and/or audio extractions? Do you have very little hard drive space left? Give us an idea of how big and complex it is.

Because malfunctions and crashes usually indicate that iMovie is near to reaching the end of its tether. Remember, it is not a product for professional use, so we can't expect it to perform as such.
User uploaded file

May 18, 2009 7:33 AM in response to Jonathan Mills

Have you tried deleting preferences and repairing permissions yet?

Sometimes permissions and preferences can get corrupted. Whenever iMovie starts acting funny, a common maintenance procedure is to do the following: Delete preferences by closing iMovie and trashing the file com.apple.iMovie.plist found in User (the House icon)/Library/Preferences. Then do a permissions repair using the Utilities/Disk Utility App on your Mac. Open the Disk Utilities window and select the Mac hard drive icon at the top of the side pane at the left. Then click on the Repair Permissions button. When you have repaired permissions and deleted preferences, restart your computer and launch iMovie. iMovie will replace the .plist file that you deleted. Be sure also that you have sufficient free disk space on your hard drive for iMovie to function correctly. 25GB often is recommended by users of this forum. After doing all of the above, relaunch iMovie and see whether you still have the problem.

May 18, 2009 9:46 PM in response to catspaw

Hi all...

Catspaw ... Could my project be corrupted from the jpg files or the downloaded songs I'm using? They're all from iTunes. The jpg files were all created from scanned photos. The project is currently 4.85 GB in size, including 2 GB of trash which of course I can't empty until I'm finished due to the Ken Burns/emptying trash bug. It has about 150 images and three songs so far and is two-thirds done.
I am intrigued by the suggestion that perhaps I don't have enough memory on my HD, right now I have 8 GB available. I'm going to dump about 20 GB onto an external HD right now. Will keep you posted!
Thanks everyone for your continued interest.... Tracy

May 18, 2009 10:19 PM in response to snaildix

Not sure how much of a pain this would be, but I did find a "work-a-round solution". What worked for me was to apply the Kens Burn effect first to all of the clips then apply the transition between each clip. Then apply the text last. You would have to go through and revert all of the affected clips to it's original state (remove the transitions and effects). Then begin to reapply the effects first then the transitions and such.

Regardless, after using prior versions of iMovie to make 15+ minute videos (with plenty of effects, transitions and titles that have no difficulties or "gliches"), I have found version 6 HD to be VERY buggy (almost to the point of being unusable).

May 19, 2009 9:17 AM in response to Jonathan Mills

Could you by any chance have some 3rd party plug-ins or Quicktime plug-ins that may be conflicting? If so, you could remove these to another folder to temporarily disable them.

Is your Quicktime updated to current version?

As a last ditch measure, there is a program called Photo to Movie that you can get cheaply on the Apple software site. That program works well with iMovie and is reputed to have a better zoom and pan effect than Ken Burns effect.

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Single Black Frame at end of Cross Dissolve

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