iMovie 10.1.13 upgraded uninstalled 2x. Start to edit movie, then tools break into colored blocks on screen and not responsive,

I've been working a lot in my libraries "avoiding" the issue until I find impossible to continue. Now I downgrade to 10.1.12 using Time Machine and my older iMovie libraries are no longer compatible! WTF!!! Hope the update with the solution comes fast.

What's happening with Apple?!!!

Restoring from Time Machine replacing iMovie 10.1.13 with 10.1.12 (and also restoring all iMovie Libraries opened with the buggy

iMovie 10.1.13) solves the problem on my system (10.14.6, Mojave). So the culprit is the 10.1.13 iMovie app.

So Apple should soon provide a patch!

This appears to be similar to a problem with the latest version of FCPX.

The solution on the FCPX forum is this......

Go to System Preferences->Accessibility->Display and turn off both reduce transparency and increase contrast.

Might be worth checking what the settings are.

YES! That seems to resolve the problem when using VLC for playback of videos. Switching either back on makes the problem return. Not going to risk trying to run iMovie though as too many projects could be lost again, but seems to be the answer.

Guess you can/could turn this off when wanting to use any program affected by this bug.

This all makes sense now with the colors flashing on MENUS which the 'Preferences->Accessibility->Display' setting affects, of course.

Thanks for this. After reverting to 10.1.12, I was faced with reinstating the older database. Then I saw your solution for FCPX. I turned off the 'Reduce Transparency' setting, reinstated 10.1.13, and so far so good. Thank You.

Try going to System Preferences>Accessibility>Display. Check your settings there. If the boxes that say "reduce transparency" and "increase contrast" are checked, then uncheck both of them. Thesurreyfriends who post here mentioned that FCPX had a similar problem and that solution worked for FCPX. If it solves it for you, post back if you have time, as it may help others with the same issue.

Good luck with this.

— Rich

I can confirm this workaround solves the issue with the unreadable menu's in iMovie 10.1.13.

In my case only the "Reduce transparancy" was checked. Unchecking that did the trick.

I do recheck it after the iMovie session though - Dark Mode looks a lot nicer with "Reduce transparancy" on...

Chris Torrence,

Apparently disabling checked accessibility options only works in some cases. I wonder if a graphics card upgrade is necessary with iMovie 10.1.13 and Catalina, in view of the several reports that have been posted about graphics issues. We'll just have to wait and see if Apple fixes it with future updates. At least you were able to downgrade and get it working.

-- Rich

Just reporting that I had the same problem as other users. Fortunately I have Time Machine so I was able to revert to version 10.1.12 and restore my previous library. It seems unfortunately common these days that "updates" create more problems than they fix.

NO, con la versión anterior de Imovie a 10.1.13 tampoco funciona, lo intenté y los menus siguen apareciendo distorsionados.

Lo que no he probado porque me d miedo es ir a una version anterior a mac os catalina, he actualizado a mac os catalina y ahí me quedo ,espero que se solucione pronto lo de imovie 10.1.13

I HAVE A SOLUTION!

It took me nearly two hours with Apple Support to get to the bottom of it, but here's what ended up working (it's a weird fix...the Apple Pro said it was the weirdest fix that he'd seen(!)):

Open System Preferences > Accessibility > Display

If "Reduce Transparency" is checked, uncheck it.

That fixed it for me...hopefully it'll work for y'all, too!

Thanks libwak for posting that info. I just installed 10.1.14 and it seems to have fixed the problems with the graphics tearing. I was able to open up a movie project, do some editing, and then export to a file without any graphics problems. In my case the "reduce transparency" and "increase contrast" settings never made any difference. But now it's (hopefully) all fixed.

10.1.14 update has fixed it. Yay. (Until this, your solution was the fix. Thanks!)

Nice to know I not the only one having problems..How do I  reverted to iMovie 10.1.12?