imovie memory leak

You might try the following procedures and see if they cure the issue.

Resetting the System Management Controller

Try resetting the System Management

Controller:

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

 Resetting the NVRAM or PRAM

Try resetting the NVRAM or PRAM, although this issue would be fairly rare:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

-- Rich

The same happens to me as well. When I plug my external HDD when iMovie is open, it tries to import the files inside. Even tough I cancel the import dialog promptly, some kind of memory leak happens and allocated RAM (virtual) for iMovie goes up to 150GB.

The solution I found is stopping iMovie, ejecting the external drive, and restarting iMovie.

Hope it helps,

Safa

As you have discovered, when you add more and more files to your iMovie library you can eventually exceed the available space on your drive. Try moving your iMovie library to an external drive that is formatted Mac OS Extended (Journaled). That will give you more storage space on your library. If you try that, first open iMovie and select the library name in the side bar. Then do a File/Consolidate Library Media. That will gather all of the files used in your projects into the iMovie library. Then you can move the library to the external drive. You can leave the iMovie app itself where it is on your internal drive, as it does not take up much space. The media is located in the library, not the app.

If you need to reformat the external drive, be aware that reformatting will delete all files on the drive, so first back up any data that you want to keep.

-- Rich

I’ll be darned.

— Rich