Not enough room in heap zone

I was having this error when I tried to export my iMovie project as a .MOV. I removed some audio effects I had pieced throughout some of the clips and the error went away the next time I tried to export. Export was successfull. Somehow, the audio effects I put in seemed to overload the "heap zone." I just didn't heap so much.

Hi john51,

try to increase that application's available RAM.

(Sorry, that will not work - I thought I'm in the 'Classic OS' section.)

Had this problem - What worked for me - OPTIMIZE your file - Go to files after having your project open... Choose an optimization option (large, original, etc...)... Give that a shot.

had the same issue, but renamed the whole (project through the folder)... earlier it had some special charaters on its file name...

And some one also said to eject all the devices connected(mass storage stuffs..) So I ejected my boot camp which holds windows OS...

I will tell you this! I read all this nerd stuff and it still didnt work... I noticed that some of my movies exported and others didnt.... When i compared them i realized that the ones that got Heap Zone issues were videos that had a page turning transition..... when i changed all the page turning transitions to fade in/out transitions.. it worked!! not sure if this will help you; but it saved my video!!!

I have been getting that error on my last two projects when optimizing the project.

If I restart the computer, the project will work on the next try. Is frustrating to come back after the five hours and seeing bombed and have to optimize again.

I have the "true" answer to this age old question. It was also confirmed for me by a senior tech advisor at Apple. Here is my case number you can reference to prove it. Case #454595897. There is no fix. iMovie is a 32bit application and OS X is a 64bit operating system. A 32bit application can never use more than 3.4GB of RAM. iMovie tries to pull everything into RAM when rendering. So, if your entire project contains more than 3.4GB of data, it will NOT render the movie. iMovie will also start behaving strange as it gets close to it limit.

You have two options. Split the project in half and render each separately. OR pay $300 for Final Cut Pro which is a 64bit application. Save your money on the RAM. More RAM just lets you have more 32bit applications open at once. Pay more for 64bit applications vs RAM. A lot of people trouble shooting this problem think they solve it by doing special tricks but it is just a coincidence that they may have did something that made the project just small enough to render.

I hope this saves people a lot of time to make up for the time I wasted.

Unfortunately, I have a movie project that continues to fail even though it is smaller than other projects that have not failed..

It initially finalized, then I found some title mistakes and corrected them. Now it will not finalize. I have duplicated the file and tried various changes, but nothing helps.

Previously, I have had the heap error on other projects, but discovered if you do a lot of work on several projects before finalizing, it can give the error. A restart, and it doesn't give the error and will finalize.

The error does not happen until about an hour into the finalizing (in this case, said would take 5 hours).

I really don't want to do the project again, but I suspect there is something now imbeded in the corrected project that is causing the failure.

see my last post for the real answer. The only solution is to split the project in half.

The splitting was seen in your post.

I made the point the failed project is much smaller than other, bigger projects that I have finalized successfully.

Also, it had finalized previously with the only change bring the correcting a title - no pictures were added. That would seem to nullify the file size as the problem if much larger projects have worked.

Sorry for not being as clear as I should be. It's not obvious what drives your project size when finalizing it. When i say project size, I'm not just referring to the media content files sizes or the project duration. Its a function of the quantity of things, objects, actions, and types of actions that drives the amount of memory iMovie uses when finalizing a project. The senior apple tech advisor said that iMovie pulls everything into RAM when you finalize it. Depending on the transitions and effects used, iMovie uses different memory amounts. As you could imagine, a simple fade to black would take less memory than processing the scrap book effect. Some people post recommend using all fade to black transitions solves their problem. It's not the effect as must as it is the amount of memory it takes to process the effect. For your example, the one effect you changed in your project must have pushed iMovie's processing requirement over the 32bit apps memory allocation. So, splitting your project up will reduce the memory required to finalize the project. Also, people note that restarting the computer solves it. This is because iMovie also stores other project's info in RAM if you go in an out of other projects or copy and paste images, etc, so a reboot clears the memory. Have you noticed that sometimes iMovie is smart enough to know it needs more memory to finalize your project and it ask you to restart iMovie.

I hope this makes more sense.

P.s. you could have a corrupted file, but this is very unlikely. A way to isolate the problem file is to split your project in half and finalize each half. one of the halves won't finalize. You then know the corrupted file is in that project, so split that project in half and repeat the process until you isolate the file. If both halves don't finalize on the first split, it's not a corrupt file issue. The odds of having 2 bad files in each half is very low. This obviously will take you a long time to find a corrupted file.

Update directed to dshaffer23

I split the project into two 20 minute segments as you suggested. The first segment finalized, but the second half did not. Then I broke the second segment into two parts and each finalized.

Since the initial first and second segments were of approximately the same size, I would have expected that both would have finalized. There are 302 pictures approximately 600-700K each. I only used fade to black transitions. There is no sound in the project.

I rebuilt a new version of the project from scratch (keeping all the old files and segments in iMovie) and the new file failed to finalize or be exported as a movie. On each of those attempts iMovie told me to close iMovie because of not enough memory memory.

iMovie has been requiring more and more time to open (currently about 30 seconds) to apparently create thumbnails) as more projects have been added. I now have 20 projects with a total of 3,000-4,000 pictures contained in those projects. There are also numerous videos in the events library.

Could it possibly be that all those thumbnail and files are what are taking up excess memory? If so, can (or should) the projects be moved from iMovie project folders(s) to another location on a drive? (I move finished projects to other drive locations within iMove which creates a new project folder when they have been completed) There are currently only 5 projects that have not been completed.

I completed a large project last year with a project file size of almost 10 GB which I finalized and created a QT movie and imported into iDVD.

I am unsure if I can move files out of a project folder to another folder using finder action that those items could be put back back into a project folder in the future. If I can move them, I experiment to see if that project would then finalize.

There are so many reason that causes a 32bit app running on a 64 bit operating system to crash. Since you now have your entire project finalized albeit in 3 segments it is simple now. Import those 3 segments into an event and make a new project with all 3 segments and finalize it. This will work.

You can move a project fold to a new location and move it back later. Not sure if this is in iMovie RAM or not, but it could be.