I have recently started having an issue with iMovie 11. The application will not start without freezing. The only way to successfully launch iMovie is to trash the preferences everytime before I run the program. Does anyone have any idea what the issue might be and how to resolve it so that I do not have to go through these steps? I am on an 8 core Mac Pro running 10.7.2 with 17GB of RAM.
Thanks
One suggestion is to try going to your Movies > iMovie Projects folder. Move one project folder out of there by moving it to the Desktop and opening iMovie. Similarly you could try moving ALL the folders out then putting them back in one at a time. Or it could just as easily be an Event Folder that's causing the problem, but still start with the Projects folders first, until you see a difference in how iMovie launches.
In a worst case scenario, it might be your iPhoto Videos folder causing problems. And in a case like that it's going to be more difficult to track down. You might have to pull your videos out of iPhoto to get iMovie to ignore that folder altogether.
Uggg...what a pain. Why does removing the preference file allow the program to start up though? I would think if it was a corrupt movie file, the application would hang on start no matter what. If it really is a corrupt movie file, why would trashing the preferences have anything to do with that?
I guess the best answer I can give is to ask another question,. . . Did you upgrade your Mac Pro from Snow Leopard 10.6 to Lion 10.7? The folks who upgrade should not only trash the preferences every chance they get, but also run Disk Utilty from the Recovery Volume under Lion.
Reboot the Mac and hold down the ⌘ Command key + 'R' key continuously until you see the Apple icon appear then let go. It will eventually reboot into the new Lion Recovery Volume. From the menu that pops up run Disk Utility > Repair Disk Permissions. Let it go until it finishes then reboot the computer one more time. Delete the Preferences, then launch iMovie and see how it reacts.
Have to trash preferences every time to get iMovie to launch
