Cannot make a movie trailer

Did you upgrade your iMac from a previous version of Mac OS X, like Snow Leopard 10.6? One bit of preventive maintenance to try is to Repair Disk Permissions. Reboot the Mac and when you hear the startup chime hold down the Option key. Use the arrow keys to choose the Recovery volume for starting up. When you finally get the desktop to appear run Disk Utility > Repair Disk Permissions. The reason I say this is I don't think the iMovie Trailer template/assets is deleted, but iMovie is having one heck of a time reading stuff from those folders where the assets reside (something's happened, hard to say what right now). Once the Utility has complete, reboot the Mac and open iMovie again, see if the Trailers appear normally in the New Project window.

The spinning clock indicates it's trying to find the clips and template materials for the Trailer. And it doesn't sound like it's being successful at all.

The template files are located in Mac HD > Library > Application Support > iMovie > Themes

First go to that folder and <CTRL> click on Road Trip and Get Info see if it has the right permissions on it (meaning it should be owned by your account on the Mac). Failing that drag these files out of the Themes folder and try reinstalling iMovie. It will most likely detect that files are missing from the install and try to replace them.

Jeroen Vink, Are able to create a new project that isn't a movie trailer? Just a regular project? Is iMovie stable and working other than just the Movie Trailers right now. I ask because the Project Browser screen shot is so scrambled it almost looks like there's some bigger issue with iMovie.

Tomorrow I'm going to try a test of my iMovie by removing those Template Bundles for the Movie Trailers and see how iMovie reacts. If I get the same results as you are seeing, that might lead me to say those Application Support files are critical to having the Movie Trailers work.

I was able to go to the iMovie App <CTRL> click on the icon and choose Show Package Contents. There's a whole lot of stuff inside of the iMovie App itself. Some of that includes the Movie Trailers including Road Trip (called Blockbuster inside the iMovie App). All of those pieces reside within iMovie itself so I don't know how you can fix this problem without replacing iMovie in some way.

Do you have a Time Machine Backup of the iMovie app too? That might be a start if you cannot reinstall iMovie from the disks.

Jeroen, One last thing to try (as I am running out of ideas quickly) is to create a new User Account under System Preferences > Accounts > Click on the Plus botton under the left side window where it shows all the accounts. Login as that user in that new account, launch iMovie and see if the Movie Trailers are not working.

Failing that, try booting up with the Shift key held down (Safe Mode) until you see the timer start spinning. Once you see the desktop, launch iMove and see if the Movie Trailers are not working.

In the first instance if it works with a new user account it's a preference file or some permission in your default user account tha's broken. Don't know which one it would be or how to repair it.

In the second instance it may be an add-on program, system extension or helper application that is causing the problem. In that case it would require uninstalling them one at a time and testing iMovie to see if reacts differently after those items are uninstalled.

Lastly, try moving all your Movie Trailer Projects out of the Movies folder (just pull them out temporarily). And see if you can create a new Movie Trailer Project. Sometimes a corrupted project can cause iMovie to fail in odd and mysterious ways. If this were to work it would be a matter of putting one Movie trailer back into the Projects folder one at a time, opening them inside of iMovie, quitting iMovie, move the next project, etc. This way it would possible to establish which Project is the culprit.

Hi Jeroen,

maybe this solution fixes your problem. When iMovie is working on a new user account it seems to be a font issue.

Try: http://unofficialimoviefaq.com/tt/TrailerNotWorking.html

Also see: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2773978?answerId=15402655022#15402655022

🙂

DerSiedler