It's 2024 & iMovie won't export in 1080p

Ian. Thanks so much for trying to help me. I really appreciate it.

But after several hours and lots of testing, I think this is a terminal problem...at least for me. Here's what I think happened. When I first created this project, I began with a test clip. That initial clip was 720p. What I didn't know then was that iMovie locks your resolution to whatever that opening clip is...So even after I had replaced the initial clip with 1080p, it didn't matter. I could drag and drop as many 1080p clips into iMovie as I wanted. But what I didn't know was that iMovie was decreasing the resolution on those clips to 720. So all those clips that I had imported in at 1080....yeah...they were reduced to 720 the moment I imported them. The way I figured this out was I did indeed attempt to copy and paste my edited video into a brand new project in iMovie. All of them exhibited the same behavior=default 720p with no usable option to export to 1080. To confirm this I began a brand new project and imported my raw 1080 footage straight from the desktop (not copy and paste within iMovie), and guess what? That footage can be exported in 1080p. So this is a really donked up design flaw with iMovie. A videographer should be able to remove any low res footage and substitute hi res footage in a video before exporting to the appropriate resolution. That is NOT the case with this software, as it locks the resolution to whatever resolution the first file imported has. And then every subsequent piece of footage you drop into it, gets that same resolution, even if it's a high res clip. WTH? I've never seen anything like this before in any video editor like, EVer. And I've been doing this for years. So I will not be using this software ever again. This design flaw makes it hot garbage in my book. The coups de gras of this story is that because of this flaw with iMovie I won't be able to copy and paste any of my edited clips into another editor to fix the resolution problem. I am beside myself over it. An entire week's worth of work. That's a ton of hours on this project...And now I'm starting over.

Again, I do appreciate you seeing this through with me. I will take a look at the software you referenced.

All the best to you.

Hi Ian. Thanks for your reply.

Yes, I restarted and I'm running the latest version of Sonoma: 14.2.1

Checking my resolution was the first thing I did. The files are 1920x1080p.

As an aside, it'll be cold day in **** before I use this application again:) Geezus...this is a real pickle. It looks like I'm going to have to copy and paste everything into another video editor and start over. When I think of all the hours I put in on this project...yeah...well, let's just say I'm in **** right now.

There's nothing to see on the export. It just shows the dialog with a default 720p option chosen. Clicking little up/down arrows next to 720 reveals two additional options: 540 and 1080. The 1080 option is grayed out. The screenshot below is the very first frame of footage.

Hi Rich. Sorry I am only now getting back to responding. But weirdly I couldn't find this thread archived in my profile. So I had to do an internet search to find it, so I could respond to you. Anyway, thanks so much. This is what finally solved the problem. You saved me having to redo everything. I am grateful beyond words. Should I ever use this application again (not likely), I will make sure that the first scene is the appropriate resolution. Thanks again