Video thumbnails are black in iPhoto

Hello Kevin, Did you ever get an answer to this? I have the exact same problem & it is annoying when I am giving a presentation that includes videos & I cannot tell which video is which. I also use iphoto '11. Thanks...

Having the same issue with black video thumbnails. iPhoto was detecting videos from my phone perfectly fine up until August 16th and then August 20th when the next video was dated is when everything started to show up black in thumbnails. I'm going to try the rebuild library option mentioned somewhere else, but that doesn't seem to be helping many people.

Some camera's when taking videos, starting and stopping a clip, etc. will add a blank frame at the beginning of the clip. If you camera does that iPhoto uses the first frame for its thumbnail.

To check a video to see if that's the problem play it with Quicktime Player from outside of iPhoto and check the first frame. If it's black then you know the reason. If not then copy the video file, movie it to the desktop and try importing again.

If it still creates a black thumbnail try this: make a temporary, backup copy (if you don't already have a backup copy) of the library and try the following:

1 - delete the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that resides in your

User/Home()/Library/ Preferences folder.

2 - delete iPhoto's cache file, Cache.db, that is located in your

User/Home()/Library/Caches/com.apple.iPhoto folder.

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3 - launch iPhoto and try importing the video file again.

NOTE: If you're moved your library from its default location in your Home/Pictures folder you will have to point iPhoto to its new location when you next open iPhoto by holding down the Option key when launching iPhoto. You'll also have to reset the iPhoto's various preferences.

If deleting the preference file fixes the problem you can try rebuilding the library with the options to rebuild the thumbnail files, i.e. options #3 and #4.

Happy Holidays

I was so hopeful this was going to work, but after following the instructions it didn't change anything. Video imports still show up as blank thumbnails after I tried importing again. Any other suggestions let me know.

Also to clarify, I did follow these steps:

1 - delete the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that resides in your

User/Home()/Library/ Preferences folder.

2 - delete iPhoto's cache file, Cache.db, that is located in your

User/Home()/Library/Caches/com.apple.iPhoto folder.

I also tried making a new library and imported a few videos to see if it would happen in a new library. Yes it did.

My videos thumbnails are working correctly in something like Finder, you can clearly see what they are. This is isolated to iPhoto it looks like.

Have also tried the rebuild process which takes forever, no luck with that either.

I'm assuming these videos displayed the correct first frame with iPhoto 8 (09), right? This only began when you upgraded to iPhoto 9 (11)?

Since the problem occurs with a new library the only solution left is to reinstall iPhoto. To do so you'll have to delete the current application and all files with "iPhoto" in the file name with either a .PKG or .BOM extension that reside in the HD/Library/Receipts folder and from the /var/db/receipts/ folder,

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Then install iPhoto from the source it came from originally and apply all necessary updaters.

Hi,

I had the same problem and solved it using the trim function in iPhoto '11. On each video with black thumbnail do the following: Trim the video, then select "Reset trim" to undo trimming. This process triggers the creation of a new video thumbnail. Good luck...

A trimming tutorial can be found here:

http://www.icreatemagazine.com/tips/how-to-trim-and-share-video-in-iphoto-tutori al/

So I upgraded to iPhoto 11 to see if this would solve anything, no it didn't.

Next after upgrading to iPhoto 11 I now have this trim functionality and tried that. Trim will solve the problem on a handful of videos but it doesn't change anything on many others. I have been trimming for hours and about 25% of the videos seem to be corrected with that suggestion. I have no idea why some of them don't trigger a new thumbnail.

I have the same problem. In fact, overall, I am finding that the OS that "just works" actually just s...ks the life out of me. I've become the CTO of my house just to get iPhoto to work.

I appreciate the innovations at Apple but I never tell clients that OSX is bullet proof and easy anymore. I try not to upgrade for as long as I can now. I fear all 3rd party apps since they just add yet another variable.

I wonder how long I can hold on to Lion? I still havn't gotten my iMac to boot reliably. USB issues, Firewire issues, iPhoto is a Time Vampire, it goes on and on and on. ... and now Mountain Lion? oye!

The more things change. The more they stay the same.

Sigh. 😐

I started having the same problem few weeks ago when importing videos from my iPhone. I installed the latest iphoto update but that did not fix the issue. I tried everthing and nothing worked. However, the solution posted by Hyperon is vaild and it works. Fixing 100 video clips can be a pain though! Apple, what's up?

What fix is that? The Hyperon link is a dead end.

"

Hi,

I had the same problem and solved it using the trim function in iPhoto '11. On each video with black thumbnail do the following: Trim the video, then select "Reset trim" to undo trimming. This process triggers the creation of a new video thumbnail. Good luck...

A trimming tutorial can be found here:

http://www.icreatemagazine.com/tips/how-to-trim-and-share-video-in-iphoto-tutori al/

"

I found the re-importing an offending video clip seemed to sort it out. Then deleted the original. Hopefully this will fix the rest also.