Exported iMovie Video freezes halfway through

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Level 1

5 points

Exported iMovie Video freezes halfway through

I recently finished a 1 hour and 25 minute iMovie project in my MacBook air and it plays completely fine in iMovie. I exported it, with it taking about an hour to save as a file. Once I tried to play it back, it got to about the 20 minute mark and completely froze video/audio but the time bar keeping going. So I tried exporting again, again it took about an hour. This time it got to about the 40 minute mark and the exams exact thing happened. I tried in both quicktime and AppleTv and the freeze happens at the same place, so it must be the file. Is there a way to fix this/prevent it from happening? It is very frustrating after taking all this time to make this for something with my school that I am supposed to send out for the kids on Monday.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Posted on May 16, 2020 3:29 PM

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Answer 1

dwhorton Author

Level 1

5 points

May 16, 2020 3:33 PM in response to dwhorton

I also just noticed that even though the length appears to be the same in the file, the estimated file size when I went to export was over 12GBs but the actual file is about 6.5, so is the entire video not exporting for some reason?

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Answer 2

Rich839

Level 8

47,730 points

May 16, 2020 7:16 PM in response to dwhorton

Hi, dwhorton,

In your timeline try scrolling through the movie looking for signs of corruption like black frames, white flashes, artifacts, and so on. Cut out any that you find and see if you can export without freezing. Make a duplicate of your movie first and work with the duplicate so you don't chop up your original. You might start your scrolling in the regions around 20 minutes and 40 minutes since those are the points where the freezing occurs.

Also, you are working with a fairly large movie. Check to make sure that you have enough free disk space on the destination drive, and also enough free space on your internal drive for iMovie to function efficiently. Lack of space can cause export failures.

A simple procedure that often will cure export issues is to delete preferences. Try opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library.

Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Now see if you can export without it freezing up.

-- Rich

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Exported iMovie Video freezes halfway through

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