What does error -2125 mean when movie exporting fails?

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Level 2

499 points

What does error -2125 mean when movie exporting fails?

I have a problem exporting a 4-hour movie (720p DV video) that has been acquired and exported by EyeTV 2.3.2 as an iMovie 9 project and assembled in said project. Some 10-14 hours later after starting a movie export in iMovie for Apple (HD) TV resolution, iMovie displays the dialogue: "Unable to prepare project for publishing—the project could not be prepared for publishing because an error occurred. (-2125)".

What is causing this error and how can I resolve it? The project is about 87 GB large as exported by EyeTV and I have about 194 GB free space on my work volume (which is not the system startup volume) that holds the iMovie project.

Being such a generic error, it is apparently a problem that isn't expected or popular. Any clues about this error would be muchly appreciated. I'll work on it some more, but I'm getting nowhere fast!

I'll write some more tech details about the system experiencing the problem a little later, but off the top of my head, it's iMovie 9.0.4 on a MacBook Pro (Core Duo) w/ 2 GB of memory and Mac OS X 10.6.7. Running Activity Monitor shows nothing abnormal to disks or CPU usage during the export, and there is no resource exhaustion for the entire time exporting is in progress.

Thanks!

--tonza

MacBook Pro (Early 2006), Mac OS X (10.6.7), 2 GHz Core Duo, 2 GB RAM

Posted on Jul 13, 2011 8:47 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Niel

Level 10

726,737 points

Jul 13, 2011 8:53 PM in response to tonza

FAT32 drives can't accomodate a file which is 4GB or larger regardless of the drive's capacity.

(59371)

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Answer 2

tonza Author

Level 2

499 points

Jul 13, 2011 10:15 PM in response to Niel

Yes, that's true, but I am not burning the movie to DVD, and I have no FAT32 volumes mounted.

However, if iMovie or QuickTime X is making such an assumption, then I have no choice but to break the movie up into chunks! How can I calculate where to split up the project so that I do not exceed the 4 GB limit for the exported movie file?

That's a tough one!

--tonza

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Answer 3

Jul 14, 2011 2:59 AM in response to tonza

Hi

There are two kinds of sizes - one must keep in mind

• Gbs - when regarding to store video material on hard disks - then how hd is formatted as UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange - Doesn't work due to the 4Gb limit - HAS TO BE Mac OS Extended (HFS)

• DURATION - Movie time + MENU time - an d this is Vital in regard to iDVD - as Gbs Mbs etc. doesn't matter at all. I've 500Mb movies that do not fit and 50Gbs that fit nicely.

Culprit here is most often the menu that can hide duration in many places one of them picture buttons - as they get same time/duration as movie dropped into them even if only one frame is showed and no animation. Other things is Menu audio that also can consume large Duration times.

So - as I wrote in another answer.

OK Error code - 2125 usually indicates that the movie is to large (in TIME - Duration).

It use to pop up when going to iDVD !

iDVD - DO NOT CARE ABOUT Gbs at all. I got movies on 500Mb that do not fit and 50Gb that fits nicely.

iDVD - ONLY CARES ABOUT - Duration. Duration is Movie time + MENU TIME. Choise of

menu and animation of this can take lost of "DURATION" 15 minutes or even more.

Choise of encoding method and use of SL or DL DVDs determine the DVD limit.

iDVD 08 & 09 & 11 has three levels of qualities.

iDVD 6 has the two last ones

• Professional Quality (movies + menus up to 120 min.) - BEST

• Best Performances (movies + menus less than 60 min.) - High quality on final DVD

• High Quality (in iDVD08 or 09) / Best Quality (in iDVD6) (movies + menus up to 120 min.) - slightly lower quality than above

DL DVDs can store about double of these times.

ALTERNATIVE - The Error Code can indicate that free space on Start-up (BOOT) hard disk is

less than 25Gb (my minimum)

So - You have added together all things except use of strange file formats to make this as hard as possibly

• 4 hours of material - DL-DVD is about 3:45 with as simple menu possibly - no photos, no audio or no animation - STILL TO MUCH

• I have about 194 GB free space on my work volume (which is not the system startup volume) that holds the iMovie project. - YES BUT - Neither iDVD or Mac OS can use this space for it's temp. files - Space has to be on the Start-up hard disk - about 25Gb free space when using SD-video and about 4-5 times more when using HD-video. This can not be addressed to other hard disks.

• iMovie 9.0.4 - Well in regard to quality this is not good. As iDVD is SD interlaced video. So using iMovie up to HD6 or FinalCut will result in much better result as they don't discard every second line on Export to iDVD.

• In iMovie'09 - Don't Share to iDVD - BUT - Share to Media Browser and as Large (not HD) - helps a bit

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 4

tonza Author

Level 2

499 points

Jul 14, 2011 2:55 AM in response to Bengt Wärleby

Thanks for your input (I have read it elsewhere...), but I don't care in this case for iDVD at all. iDVD isn't running at all when iMovie generates the error, and I am not burning a DVD disc. I am only exporting an iMovie project to a file on one of my HFS Extended volumes. The intent is to sync it to an Apple TV for viewing.

Nothing fancy!

--tonza

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Answer 5

Jul 14, 2011 3:22 AM in response to tonza

Then I would

A. Trash iMovie pref files

B. Break down movie to smaller segments eg 1 hour - there might be a corrupted piece of material to find and mend/exchange. Finding this by exporting one segment at a time to see when it fails again.

Good Luck

Yours Bengt W

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Answer 6

tonza Author

Level 2

499 points

Jul 15, 2011 9:30 PM in response to Bengt Wärleby

Hi Bengt,

Seems that making movles < 2 hours long is the way to go for the moment... I have started segmenting the movies so that the export operation completes without an error. Without changing any preferences or mucking around with the filesystems, it seems that just shortening the length of the exported movie project works. I don't know what the limit is, but it'd be nice if Apple actually documented this limit somewhere... or at least produce a much better error message in the software!

I'll just stick to the time limits that are often the case with single-sided DVDs. Bit of a silly restriction given that I can actually work on movie projects almost double the length!

Cheers!

--tonza

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Answer 7

Mitshko

Level 1

5 points

Oct 19, 2012 3:25 AM in response to Bengt Wärleby

Hi. I have a similar problem.

I extract the video of a nornal DVD to mpeg4 and this file grow to about 8GB duration 1:12. Then I edited this video in iMovie and took lots of hours the export the final video. Finally the new video was about 9GB.

I used share and did another video by exporting using Quicktime to compare qualities and sizes.

Then I modify the video in iMovie again, not much without extending the duration. Total video was always 1:12 hours.

And now is when I have the error 2125. I kept same settings, tried other codecs changing the settings of exporting as Quicktime and still pop out the error. Takes like 10 hours to produce the video and when is at the half of time is when the error comes.

After the codec was changed the export took like 3hours but still the error message appearing at the end.

I have plenty of free space and 8GB of RAM.

Maybe i have to free space or change space settings from other part of the system that i yet dont figure it out how to do it.

Pls help if u can.

Cheers :)

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Answer 8

Oct 19, 2012 9:35 AM in response to Mitshko

Sorry - wrong thouht

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