Photos downloaded from a wedding photographer's web site cause iMovie project to freeze and iMac crash

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Photos downloaded from a wedding photographer's web site cause iMovie project to freeze and iMac crash

First time in many years I’ve posted in this forum, but hoping someone might help me with an issue I have encountered in making a video of my niece’s wedding. I’m using iMovie v 10.13.1. In putting the project together, I used 1080 video shot on my iPhone 7, a few photos taken with the iPhone and about 50 photos from other sources. Some of the photos were emailed to me from my sister, put into iPhoto and the added to the project, but most were downloaded from the wedding photographer’s website and placed in the appropriate folder in iPhoto, then added to the video project timeline. In playing back the project in the timeline, the video freezes on certain photos while the audio continues to play. Not only is iMovie “frozen,” the computer also locks up. The only way to get the computer operable again is to turn it off, then on, using the on/off switch on the back of the iMac. The “freezing” occurs on random photos, rarely the same one. But, the one thing in common is that the photos that “freeze” are always the ones from the professional photographer that were downloaded from his website. When the video is uploaded to a video sharing platform (Vimeo, in this case), on playback the video becomes pixilated and unviewable at the point when the professional photographer’s first appear in the video project timeline. Burning to a Blu Ray disk basically has the same results. Anyone have a suggestion? Theory why this is occurring? Thanks in advance for any feedback.

iMac 27", macOS 10.14

Posted on Nov 21, 2019 6:06 PM

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Answer 1

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scooper54 Author

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Nov 24, 2019 3:17 PM in response to Rich839

Thank you, Rich! Resizing the photos did the trick. The photographer's website had the option to download in two forms: high resolution and "web size." I replaced all the photos with the "web size" option and the resolution was good enough to use in the video. Took a little while, but it worked! Thanks, too for the suggestion to convert the photos into a slide show. Very much appreciate your time in answering my question!

Cheers!

S. Cooper

Indiana USA

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Answer 2

Rich839

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Nov 21, 2019 8:01 PM in response to scooper54

Hi, scooper54,

It may be that the professional photographer's clips are in a format that is not compatible with iMovie. Use the Image Capture app in the Applications folder on your Mac to import a clip or two to your desktop. Open them in QuickTimePlayer and do a Window/Show Movie Inspector. In the box that appears, check the format. iMovie likes H.264, or Mp4/AAC.

Whatever the format, use a video converter like Handbrake to convert the videos to Mp4/AAC (even if they are already that) and then import the converted clips into iMovie to see if they work without freezing the system. You can get Handbrake here:

https://handbrake.fr/

Since these are wedding videos you might want to work with a duplicate of the movie so as to preserve the orignal format, unless redownloads remain available from the photographer's website.

Congrats on the nuptials.

-- Rich

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Answer 3

scooper54 Author

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8 points

Nov 22, 2019 2:12 PM in response to Rich839

Hello Rich:

Thank you for taking the time to address my question, and thank you, too, for the nuptial congrats for my niece. But, I need to clarify my question. I have not used any video clips from the professional photographer -- only still photos in the .jpg format. All of the video clips I used for the project were shot on my iPhone 7, and the video works fine. It's only the still photos downloaded from the photographer's website that cause iMovie to freeze and the iMac to crash. Still photos shot on my iPhone and others my sister emailed to me work fine, too. I've done two other wedding videos for relatives, and I downloaded photos from their professional photographers' websites with no issues. Why these photos are causing so many problems is a mystery and very frustrating. Do you possibly have any other suggested fixes? Thank you again for trying to help me!

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Answer 4

Rich839

Level 8

47,250 points

Nov 22, 2019 3:14 PM in response to scooper54

I misread your original post. Thought you were talking about videos. Sorry.

Sometimes high def photos can cause issues in iMovie. Open one of the troublesome photos with the Preview app on your Mac. Click on Tools/Adjust Size. Reduce the long dimension of the photo to 2500. So, for example if the photo dimensions are shown to be 4500 x 3200, reduce the 4500 number to 2500. Then save the photo and import into iMovie. See if that works.

— Rich

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Answer 5

Rich839

Level 8

47,250 points

Nov 22, 2019 4:16 PM in response to Rich839

If still no luck after resizing the photo, you can convert your photos into videos by placing them into a slide show in the Photos app. Then export the slide show as a video that you can import into iMovie. You can put several photos into the slide show or just make a one-photo slide show. After you get it into iMovie you can adjust the duration by increasing or decreasing the speed like you would for any video. To do that just Control-click on the slide show video in the timeline and select Show Speed Editor in the pop-up menu. That will reveal a speed slider handle in the upper right hand corner of the clip. Drag it to the left to speed up the clip and to the right to slow it down. If you use a slide show video with several photos you can run the whole clp in your iMovie video, or you can do a Modify/Split clip to cut it up as needed.

-- Rich

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Answer 6

Rich839

Level 8

47,250 points

Nov 24, 2019 3:43 PM in response to scooper54

Great. Glad it worked for you. 😊

— Rich

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Photos downloaded from a wedding photographer's web site cause iMovie project to freeze and iMac crash

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