iMovie 10.1.14 incredibly slow and choppy

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Level 1

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iMovie 10.1.14 incredibly slow and choppy

I routinely use iMovie to make 1-2 minute simple videos for my job, and in the last few weeks it has suddenly become unwieldy and super frustrating. Playback while editing is so slow and so choppy that I can't tell how the video looks until I export it and view it on YouTube or as a file. I am not doing anything in the videos that I haven't done before, nothing new and fancy. I have tried every tip I've found online, deleting preferences, restarting, freeing up tons of space on my hard drive, creating a new library--NOTHING WORKS. Please can someone give me some clues on what is going on. I am at a complete loss.

I'm working on a MacBook Pro 13-inch, early 2015--8GB memory--82 GB free of 250 GB flash storage.

MacBook

Posted on Dec 12, 2019 1:41 PM

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Answer 1

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Rich839

Level 8

47,640 points

Dec 12, 2019 5:40 PM in response to momwise

Try booting up in Safe Mode (see Finder help instructions) and, after everything loads, immediately shut down and reboot in normal mode. That sometimes clears out conflicts that cause issues with apps.

Since you have done some updating you might also try resetting the System Management Controller on your Mac. It is easy to do. Here's a link that explains the steps:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

-- Rich

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Answer 2

momwise Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 13, 2019 6:40 AM in response to Rich839

Thank you, I will give these steps a try.

Last night out of sheer desperation, I opened the AVCHD package and pulled out the .mts files and imported those directly, and it worked. I have used AVCHD for a long time now without this issue and am not sure what changed recently. I'm going to Google around interactions between iMovie and AVCHD files. These are not fancy videos, and I might just go back to using my iPhone to film.

Anyway, thanks so much for your reply.

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Answer 3

Rich839

Level 8

47,640 points

Dec 13, 2019 8:06 AM in response to momwise

Since the .mts vids play fine it is less likely that Safe Mode or System Controller Management reset would help. However, there is no harm in doing those simple procedures just to see.

Others have reported issues with AVCHD footage since the new updates. It's good that you were able to import directly the .mts files without having had to use a video converter to re-encode them to Mp4/AAC first. That shows that iMovie is making the conversion as it should.

-- Rich

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iMovie 10.1.14 incredibly slow and choppy

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