iMovie 11 - Black/Empty Preview Window

For me firstly about few months ago only solution after trying many from web was changing duration of still images in iMovie.

Now it didn't work so I've tried again everything and many more and just at last almost trying another application I've noticed that images from other devices which are displayed OK are 2999px maximum but my pictures from iPhone which are not are 3200px. I've changed that for multiple images in Preview to 2800 and voila it works!

Did you ever find a solution? I too have not been able to get iMovie 11 to work. The display window stays black and exporting videos results in all black video. I see the video clips underneath and I can scroll and pull the video to the projects section. I can also hear the audio and scrub and everything. I really don't want to re-install the OS.

I'm having the same problem. What did you end up doing to resolve this?

well... after a lot of trial and error, with a similar problem...

I have narrowed mine down to 2 differnet approaches that work (anything else results in black/blank video in preview and export)

If the photos already fit the proper aspect ratio (i.e. cropped in iphoto to 16:9 already)

- setup project with NO transitions when you define it to start with

- before you import anything, turn ken burns off, set it to "fit image" or whatever

Regardless of size/shape of image

- setup the project WITH transitions (i've just used the default Disolve i think it was)

- leave ken burns ON...

Bottom line, if i try to turn off Ken Burns AND have it Crop the photo.... i'm dead in the water... and the transitions seem to be tied with Ken Burns.... either take em both or neither....

of course your mileage may vary... but maybe that will help someone .... or maybe apple will read it and fix it

Sounds like a good way to narrow down what can go wrong, thanks for writing that up. I've seen some people post to the Discussion Board with similar but not exactly the same problems with iPhoto imports into iMovie. Definitely going to bookmark this for future reference, thanks fishy990.

I've same problem as Dizzi45Z45 - no preview picture for videos under Project, but there is sound.
Anyone, please, who solved the problem be kind to share with us

Unfortunately, the only way I fixed it was reinstalling my OS. I know.... Probably not what you wanted to hear.

I simply changed the frame rate of the project, and i was able to see the video...

Having the same issue - would love to find a fix!

It worked for me when I created the new project and NOT checking the box indicating I wanted cross-dissolve transitions automatically added. Initially, I got the black preview window because I had checked the box.

Well. I also had the problem of black preview and exportation.
Even before I put into practice some of the solutions I read here, I ran repair disk permissions and that worked for me.