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Photos blurred when dragged/imported to iMovie - Please Help

Hello All,


all of the sudden (like with everything) the photos that I drag and drop into iMovie (from the Photos app) are all blurred. The videos that come along for the ride are fine and still showing with 4k quality, but the photos are blurred to the max.


Any help with this issue is appreciated... thank you!


-Rafid

MacBook Pro (2017 – 2020)

Posted on Sep 11, 2023 8:11 AM

Reply
7 replies

Sep 11, 2023 12:36 PM in response to Raf_Dam27

Actually, there is a third option. Put the photos in a Photos app album and sort them in the order that you want. Then "select all" of the photos in the album and File/Export them to your desktop from the Photos app using the File Name setting "Sequential". They will export in order and subsequently import into iMovie in order. Possibly they will be in reverse order when displayed in the iMovie project media browser and, if so, they should revert to the correct order when dragged as a batch into the timeline.



-- Rich



Sep 11, 2023 9:05 AM in response to Raf_Dam27

Hi,


The blurry photos issue has been mentioned by others recently on this forum. It might be a glitch with the latest updates.


Make sure that the photos that you are importing are actually downloaded inside the Photos app, and not stored in the cloud. Cloud photos are small thumb displays that will not import at full resolution into iMovie. One way that this can happen is if you have optimized storage enabled in the photos app. Enabling optimized photos will result in some photos that have not been opened in awhile being temporarily stored in the cloud until opened. You need first to download the photos and then import them into iMovie.


You can download cloud-stored photos within the Photos app by simply opening them before importing into iMovie. Or, what has worked for others with this problem, is to export the photos from the Photos app to a desktop folder, and from there drag them into iMovie. Exporting them downloads them. Try that even if you are not storing any photos in the cloud. EDIT: By exporting the photos I mean doing a File/Export Photo from the Photos app.


-- Rich

Sep 11, 2023 12:19 PM in response to Rich839

Hello Rich,


These photos are not in the cloud, they are locally stored.


The devil with exporting into a separate folder is the sort function is broken - so when I sort oldest to newest, it doesn't truly sort oldest to newest, about 20% of the photos are not correctly sorted.


So 1 option is blurry photos with perfect sorting, or un-blurry photos with terrible sorting. Neither are perfect.


-Rafid

Sep 11, 2023 1:15 PM in response to Rich839

Thanks Rich for your support so far.


I just tried your 3rd option, and sadly still the sort function is ~20% off when I import into iMovie. For instance, in my album from our recent vacation, pics/vids start at the airport, then to the hotel, then for some reason some vids/pics of the airport again (we didn't go back to the airport day 1 of our trip).


I called apple support and they referred me to call the next level support.


In the past, the order or sort of my pics/vids within my albums in the Photo app would actively be shown in the iMovies link to it. When I would change the order in a particular album in Photo app, iMovie would also update in that order. Then I would simple drag and drop the photos in my album from within iMovie's pointer to the Photos app.


Today, that feature was removed and some Apple engineer decided to hardcode the order Newest to Oldest when viewing the Photo app's albums. Okay... why remove such a nice feature and hardcode it? And if you did want to hardcode it, why hardcode newest to oldest, it's not in chronological order.


Now, due to the regress mentioned above, I would jump through hoops of exporting to desktop, or to events or other ways, until now where either the photos are blurry beyond recognition or the pics/vids are not in chronological order.


Simply stuck at the moment.


-Rafid

Sep 11, 2023 2:35 PM in response to Raf_Dam27

Are you saying that when you export to your desktop as Sequential from the Photos app that the order is not preserved when subsequently dragged as a batch into iMovie? I’ve never heard of that happening before, not to say that it couldn’t happen.


Try deleting preferences by opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and selecting to delete preferences in the box that sppears.


— Rich

Sep 11, 2023 2:38 PM in response to Rich839

"

Are you saying that when you export to your desktop as Sequential from the Photos app that the order is not preserved when subsequently dragged as a batch into iMovie? I’ve never heard of that happening before, not to say that it couldn’t happen.

"

Yes exactly.


"

Try deleting preferences by opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and selecting to delete preferences in the box that sppears.

"

Yup, I did this with phone support helper and still not okay. I also installed latest software release for my macbook and deleted then reinstalled iMovie.



-Rafid

Sep 11, 2023 6:49 PM in response to Raf_Dam27

Hmmmm. Usually exporting as a Sequential batch from the Photos app will work. But obviously it did not do so here.


I am curious as to whether, when you did the Sequential export to your desktop folder, was the proper order preserved there? If so, did the order change upon dragging into iMovie? If the order were preserved in the desktop folder, perhaps you could try dragging them into iMovie a few at a time instead of the hold batch at once. Also, try dragging directly into the timeline .


Another thing, is that you could assign an alphabetical letter sequence to the titles, so that one title begins with a-, and then the next title with b-, and so on. Then, when in iMovie, sort by name and hopefully the alphabetical order will be preserved.


Other than that, I am running out of ideas. You may need to manually arrange the 20% that are out of order.


-- Rich


Photos blurred when dragged/imported to iMovie - Please Help

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