IMovie HD movie has no Play buttons.. partially frozen

Hi

there are two - most probably origin to this

• use of strange media eg .avi, .wmv .mp4 etc.
(not from miniDV tape Camera - as iMovie up to HD6 is made for)

Convert video to - streamingDV and
audio to .aiff 48kHz 16-bit (no .mp3 etc)

• corruption - eg iMovie pref file or preferences

Trash iMovie plist file
Repair Permissions
Usually helps here

Else

*Not knowing the origin to Your problem - General approach when in trouble is as follows.*

• Free space on internal (start-up) hard disk if it is less than 10Gb should rather be 25Gb or more

• Delete iMovie pref file

iMovie pref file resides.

Mac Hard Disk (start-up HD)/Users/"Your account"/Library/Preferences

and is named. (one or more of these)

com.apple.iMovie.plist
com.apple.iMovie3.plist
com.apple.iMovie7.plist
com.apple.iMovie8.plist

and find

com.apple.iApps.plist

While iMovie is NOT RUNNING - move this/these file/s out to desk-top.

Now restart iMovie.

• Hard disk is untidy. Repair Permissions, Repair Hard disk (Apple Disc Util tool)

• Garageband-fix. Start it, Play a note and Close it. Re-try (Corrects an audio problem that hinders iMovie)

• Screen must be set to Million-colors

• Turn off Mac and disconnect Mains/Power for 20-30 minutes - will at least re-set FW-port

• Third party plug-ins that doesn't work OK (not relevant for iMovie’08 or 09)

• Problems in iPhoto Library can affect iMovie to crash on start-up. Re-build this first then try to re-start iMovie.
This You do by
_ close iPhoto
_ on start up of iPhoto - Keep {cmd and alt-keys down}
_ now select all five options presented
_ WAIT a long long time

• iMovie updated ?
• QuickTime updated ?
• Mac OS version ?

• Program miss-match. iMovie 4 - will not work under Leopard
• Program miss-match. iMovie 5.0.2, up to Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK
• Program miss-match. iMovie 6.0.3 or 6.0.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)
• Program miss-match. iMovie’08 v. 7.1.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.5.5 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)
• Program miss-match. iMovie’09 v. 8.0.6, Mac OS X.5.8 AND QuickTime 7.6.4 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)

From LKN 1935. (in this case = iMovie HD (5), I tried it all, but nothing worked.
Your answer (above) has been helpfull insofar as all the different trials led to the conclusion that
there was something wrong with my iMovie software. I therefore threw everything away and reinstalled
iMovie from the HD. After that the exportation of DV videos (there has not been any problem with HDV videos)
to my Sony camcorders worked properly as it did before.

Lennart Thelander
I run "Cache Out X", clear out all caches and restarts the Mac.

Yours Bengt W