Brand new MBP 15 inch. iMovie works briefly then spinning wheel of death.

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Brand new MBP 15 inch. iMovie works briefly then spinning wheel of death.

Brand new MBP 15 inch. (Mojave 10.14.6 2.6gh, core i7, 16gb, 2400 MHz DDR4, 2 tb flash storage.) No iCloud. iMovie works briefly then spinning wheel of death. Force quit gets me out, but no improvement next time. Thought it was a file conversion issue, but that is not it. I skip the conversion now, but still freezes. Using .avi files or .mov files and neither work properly. Sometimes I can make the movie but cannot share it to iTunes or the desktop. Shares a few seconds of video then stops. Crashes every time I try to play movie. Deleted iMovie and all associated caches and files and re-uploaded. Got rid of all video files from when this started happening. Reset Nvram and preferences. 2 long calls with AppleCare and no joy yet. Was working great 6 days ago and now it is useless. Very frustrating. Any ideas would be appreciated.

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Nov 2, 2019 12:50 PM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

Nov 2, 2019 1:57 PM in response to ChristopherRobin9494

Try booting up in safe mode (see Finder help menu instructions) and, after everything loads, shut down and reboot in normal mode. Now see if iMovie functions properly.

If no luck, try opening iMovie in a new user account and see if it works there.

iMovie doesn’t support .avi files, and not necessarily all .mov files. When you converted if you did not convert to Mp4/AAC, then try doing that.

You might have a hardware problem. You could run the Apple Diagnostics program to see.

— Rich

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Answer 2

Nov 4, 2019 7:04 AM in response to Rich839

Wow, Thank you Rich839. Just the safe mode boot seems to have made all the difference. Everything back to normal, but I will need to make a few more movies to really see, as even the "fade to white transition" caused the spinning wheel of death and a force quit to get it back up and running. That is a transition I never use, but I did on the test. Once I deleted it, then the iMovie movie played fine and I was able to share to my desktop. Thanks again, and if the problems come back I will try your other suggestions.

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Answer 3

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

Nov 4, 2019 9:48 AM in response to ChristopherRobin9494

Sorry that the problem returned. There's a conflict somewhere on your computer that is causing this.

If still no success after using Apple Diagnostics, you might want to talk to Apple Support. To do that click on the "Contact Support" item in the upper right hand corner of this forum's screen. Then navigate to the appropriate area and you should find a phone number to call. Tell the support folks your issue and what you have done to resolve it so far. Hopefully they will be able to help you resolve this.

Good luck with your endeavor. I'm confidant that you will eventually get to the bottom of it.

-- Rich

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Answer 4

Nov 4, 2019 9:30 AM in response to Rich839

Sadly it worked only very briefly and the crashing freezing spinning wheel came back with a vengeance. So I did another safe mode re-boot and set up a new user account. No joy there and the same problems occurred. I have been using .avi and .mov files for years in iMovie without trouble. The convert message to make these files compatible with future iOS versions, i.e Catalina (64 bit), did seem to be a problem as it never happened (the conversion) and it kept asking me to try again even after I told it to do it. But even when I skip this it still freezes. Next step is diagnostics.

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