Imovie 11 export problem. Not enough room in Heap Zone. I have 32GB of RAM!

I only have this problem on my MAC Laptop........I do not have an issue when I do a project on my iMac 27 inch with 16GB of mem.

My laptop had 8 GB of mem.

I know its been two years since your post on heap zone error, but your solution worked. After much research and frustration your solution worked...Thanks

Oh Brian, I had such high hopes from others' responses that your Apple Intermediate Codec technique would solve the problem... alas, I get about 4 min into the export and then I get heap zoned yet again. I've rebooted about 20 times, exported using every method and size, renamed the project, freed up every bit of memory I possibly can, and I still get heap zoned...I guess I'll never get to show anyone this 6 min long video.

Apple, I agree with the previous complaints about the need for an iMovie update or something to solve this. The fact that this issue has lasted for so long is pretty disgraceful. But I don't know why I even mention Apple, it's not like anyone from Apple will ever read this.

My only solution-- try to convince my company to purchase FinalCut.

I HAVE THE SOLUTION! "heap zone error"

AFTER YOU HAVE TRIED ALL OF THE SO CALLED "EXPERTS" IDEAS, AND NONE OF THEM WORK SIMPLY DO THESE STEPS, I JUST DID IT AND IT WORKED FOR ME!

Go to imovie>your project>you must delete all your effects that you have put on your videos

im sorry you must delete all the effects that you have varied across your videos but here is a step to get them back!

after you delete all the effects, simply export your effectless project to your documents, than after its exported, create a new project in iMovie, create a new event as well, upload the exported project from your documents into that new event, than copy and paste different sections from your exported effectless project into the new storyboard than add your effects again to the parts you want, than it should be exportable!

THIS WORKED FOR ME!

I HAVE THE SOLUTION! "heap zone error"

AFTER YOU HAVE TRIED ALL OF THE SO CALLED "EXPERTS" IDEAS, AND NONE OF THEM WORK SIMPLY DO THESE STEPS, I JUST DID IT AND IT WORKED FOR ME!

Go to imovie>your project>you must delete all your effects that you have put on your videos

im sorry you must delete all the effects that you have varied across your videos but here is a step to get them back!

after you delete all the effects, simply export your effectless project to your documents, than after its exported, create a new project in iMovie, create a new event as well, upload the exported project from your documents into that new event, than copy and paste different sections from your exported effectless project into the new storyboard than add your effects again to the parts you want, than it should be exportable!

THIS WORKED FOR ME!

Brian Flaherty, THANKS! It worked for me and the baccalaureate and graduation festivities owe you. The frustrations caused more gray but not to the point of pulling out my hair thanks to you...

The first hint that worked for me!!! Thank you so much!!!

Just got my 21 inch iMac with latest Intel i7 Haswell (4th generation) CPU, 16GB RAM, 1TB of HDD (plenty of available space since it is still new). Now, I am having the same "Not Enough Memory" problem when I am trying to export a movie I have just made. I had this problem with my previous 2008 iMac, which had only 4GB of RAM. I thought memory size was the problem, but I have now proven that it is not a DRAM size problem. And, since I have not installed or run too many applications in the background. I have concluded that iMovie does have a memory management issue.

Com'on, Apple, fix it.

Try Brian's workaround from an earlier post.

I had the "heap" error and finally tried this workaround:

1. Use iMovie to "Export using Quicktime",
2. Video Settings: Compression Type = Apple Intermediate Codec; Preset = HDV 1080p; Size (in my case) = 1920 x 1080.
3. Audio Settings: Apple Lossless
4. Export = Movie to Quicktime Movie (the exported file was 33.64GB!)
5. Open the newly published movie in Quicktime Player, and then Export it (I used the "PC and Mac" setting). The exported file became 2.36GB, if you can believe it.
6. In iTunes, "Add to Library" the exported movie.
7. The export worked, and the file is H.264 1080. It played perfectly on my Apple TV ver 3 at 1080p.

Did not help me.

But then again, I have the parm error, not the heap error.

How many years later and the issue is still around...

I went through the disk cleaning exercise recommended by BookX, which did improve the amount of free memory, but made no difference to the export of my movies. I pulled every peripheral (printer, FitBit dongle, iPod USB, backup drive), and turned off wi-fi (never do use TimeMachine). No difference, even after three restarts. Likewise, the advice from I forget whose entry, suggesting I change all the slo-mo from 75% to 50% (a default speed). No dice. About the only improvement was that the export crashed into the heap zone after a longer period of time.

What's really wacky? I made this 88-minute film in three parts: two around 38 mins, one -- the credits reel -- only 8:15 mins. The credits reel exported to Large and HD1080 simultaneously in a couple of hours; it exported through MediaBrowser from a native project file of 1.16 GB. The longer parts 1 and 2 eventually made it into Quicktime as .mov files from native project file sizes of 320.3 MB and 438 MB respectively. That's right, the enormous 3rd part, mostly scrolling credits and some stills, one or two video clips, behaved fine.

I have made several 40-minute wedding videos that exported through MediaBrowser to iDVD without any problem. What the **** is going on with these two projects? And is this now going to happen on every subsequent film?

I am just trying Brian's workaround -- it went fine for 35 minutes -- up till five minutes ago, when, with 4 minutes left to go, the bar reset itself and now it says "about 2 hours." No, now it says, "about 39 minutes." I'm going to try shutting down wifi and closing Firefox. Not that I think it will help.

iMac running 10.9.5, 3.4 GHz Intel Core i7, 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, 2 TB hard drive with 821.35 GB free space