iPhone 4 + iMovie = Crashes the iMovie App and does not export...

I read in one of the comments left by users on the app store that they ahd success uninstalling the app and reinstalling and then immediately rebooting iphone. I tried this, and it's working for me for the most part. You lose everything you were working on before obviously, but I was able to start putting together 5 minute clips now. I will say the app has crashed a few times since then during an export (I believe it was becuase I locked screen, though). The app is still flawed, but at least I can use it now. If that changes I'll update here. Obviously a patch is in order. Good luck.

I did it by using iTunes to reinstall it after I removed it from my iPhone. I'm told, though, that the "installed" link will go back to "buy now" after you uninstall it. It will look like its being purchased a second time, but once the install starts you should get a message along the lines of "you have alreeady purchased this item, would you like to download an update" or something like that. After each step in the process I rebooted my iPhone. So, uninstall, reboot, reinstall, reboot (before launching app). By no means am I saying this is a fix. I'm just sharing how I got it working again. It could be that after you have three or four projects going the app starts to crash on export. I haven't gotten back up past two projects yet, so I'm not sure. Before I had about 4 projects going. So far so good for me.

I really don't want to lose my movie that is 2:50. It's the only movie on there. I spent a lot of time on it.
Stinking Apple just needs to come out with an iMovie for iPhone 4 update to fix this problem. They wrote they app and they wrote iOS4 and they designed the iPhone so they should be able to fix this without having us have to keep reloading the app.

Ok after reading everyone's posts I decided to just go ahead and delete the iMovie app from my phone and iTunes. Yes I lost my project which I was warned I would. But I had a project made from this weekend beach trip and really wanted to show it off to my friends on Facebook. So I decided to just go for it and recreate the entire movie. The movie was 2:50 before wiping and after about 35 min I was able to recreate the movie again using the same pics, footage and music. It ended up being 2:48 this time. Pretty darn close. But guess what??? It still doesn't export. The first try it looked like it was trying but then my whole phone just restarted. Then after it restarted I tried again and it just exits the app. Tried removing the music, tried different export modes. Nothing.
Disappointed that by the time Apple puts out an update my Saturday beach trip will be a thing of the past and the video isn't even worth showing. The excitement wears off. Paid $5 for an app that I thought was supposed to work.

Come on Apple please update this app with a fix for the issues we are all having. This thread has a ton of views and posts. They have to be seeing it.

I had the same problem.

make sure there is enough space on the phone for it to export a movie (they can be quite large files).

and

turn auto lock off to export the file, so the fone doesn't lock.

then

fingers crossed on not recieving a text, call or push notification lol

those first two combined (plus the luck of no-one contacting me/lack of friends *sob sob*) worked for me, hope that solves it for everyone else 🙂

Dryman

I too am having this problem, I was able to export an HD movie that was /just/ over a minute long and was very happy with the outcome. I then tried to make another movie (this one just over 2:30), and the app crashes on export every time I try. I too have tried all sizes, I've tried with music, I've tried without music. I've even put my phone to "airplane mode" without any connection to wifi, or a cellular network I was able to prevent emails, texts, push notifications and phone calls. With my phone in airplane mode I also set my phone to NEVER lock, closed ALL of my backgrounding apps, then I launched imovie and tried to export again, but to no avail. The app crashed on export. This DEFINITELY has everything to do with duration. In fact, has anyone else noticed that the music apple provides as "theme music" all seem to end after a minute? Seems like they are trying to indirectly tell us something. Hopefully they find a way to fix this ASAP, and don't just tell us to make our movies shorter, because that would be the sign of a bad movement from within apple. First it is "don't hold you phone like that" the next better not be "express yourself in 60 seconds or less" I understand we are asking this handheld device to do A LOT, I mean think about it, we are composing HD video and exporting it... ON A PHONE, but if the phone can't do it for more than a minute, either don't do it at all, or better yet, make it very clear and well known that the phone can't do it for content longer than a minute. If I was made aware of this, I STILL would have purchased iMovie, and loved it... But now I can't help but feel a little disappointed because I wasn't lead to expect this limitation.

Most disappointing aspect of this whole issue: Still not even an acknowledgement of the issue from APPLE.

we need to keep this thread bumped. I have a video that I took at my cousins wedding and I can't export it to send to her. I can't believe there hasn't been an update yet.

still waiting for a fix (or at least a comment from Apple) on this export bug. There's no magic bullet for this. They probably just overflow the available memory on some unoptimized pre-export process, and it causes the app to seg fault. Poorly written software can't be fixed by re-installing or anything else.

Just an FYI... I put my phone in airplane mode to avoid interruption when rendering. I'm still having no problems exporting. I've created several movies now and used mixed content (old videos, new videos, old pics, pics from other cameras, lots of different music) and I'm no longer experiencing the crash like I was before.

Boone51, how long is the longest movie you have successfully been able to export? I have a 5 minute video that not only wants to crash but hangs and frequently crashes when I try to edit it. Very frustrating. Is there any way we can get a refund on imovie until Apple gets this figured out?

I only have 3 currently. They are 4:43, 1:32, and 2:52. I had a 5:14 in there but I deleted it for fear of running out of memory and starting to crash again. They have all exported ok without crash with one exception. As I said, I believe that was because I locked the phone, though. I'm not sure of a way to get a refund, but I assume there has to be some method of doing that. I figured I'd give them a week to work out a patch before I started getting excited (assuming it starts crashing on me again). Not saying that's what anyone else should do... Just saying that's my plan. Same goes for the antenna issue. The clock is ticking big time on that one.

I don't think there is a way to get a refund. I'd rather have a working app than my $4.99 returned. But, if it won't work, I guess I'd take the money back!

As I posted earlier, I also not only put my phone in airplane mode, but I also cleared out all of my backgrounded apps. Yet, my 2:30 movie STILL failed to export. My movie is very photo heavy, very few video clips (2 or 3 vids, 15-20 images), not sure if that means anything. Very frustrating, and I agree with the others... It is unacceptable that this issue hasn't even been acknowleged by an Apple rep. Unacceptable.