why is iMovie so slow?

My HDD's only half full, (245GB out of 500GB) and I'm having the same issue. 😠 The version of iMovie is 10.1.4, running on MacOS Sierra. My MacBook Pro's a good 5 years old, and up until recently, hasn't given me problems other iMovie slowing it up severely.

On Mac Operator System is different to PC operator system.

Mac OS bake whole over and over on during

Trimmings video clips is heavy load more.

PC OS is data on other drives during trimmings Mac OS does not.

That is why you need 50 GB's space free.

Sound like small GB's mean small tap of data

Large GBs mean big tap of data.

I am MAC and I still use PC for trimmings video clips.

We cannot work in the dark.

What Mac and what versions of OS X and iMovie are you using?

What kind of movie?

How much free space on your hard drive, and how much RAM do you have?

Hey Jcoupe, did ya find a solution to your slow i movie? i ve got the same issue here with a bran new mac book pro... working on a 25 min. project... all HD ! with around 40 min. of events... did cut a lot of the unwanted event sections and it did help a lot but it stil very slow. to slow for the price and capability of this machine !!! i was working with a 600 $ toshiba of 2 years and the movie editing was faster with it... much faster... I do like my machine but have to say my come back to mac as left me cold and wet for now... please let me know if you find a remedy to the problems.

Thanks.

fredo

Hi

Several things can do this

• HD-material takes much more power to be processed

• if Hard Disk is filling up

• lot's of icons on DeskTop (YES strange but reported to matters)

• other processes running in back-ground - energy savers, frame savers, spotligt search, TIME MACHINE, File Vault, etc - I turn all OFF

TO GET IT TO WORK SLIGHTLY FASTER

• Minimum of 25Gb free space on Start-Up hard disk

• No other programs running in BackGround e.g. Energy-Saver

• Don’t let HD spin down or be turned off (in Energy-Save)

• Move hard disks that are not to be used to Trash - To be disconnected/turned off

• Goto Spotlight and set the rest of them under Integrity (not to be scanned)

• Set screen-saver to a folder without any photo - then make an active corner (up right for me) and set pointer to this - turns on screen saver - to show that it has nothing to show

• And let Mac run on Mains - not just on battery

AND - Creating a New User-Account - Log into this - and run iMovie - made my iMovie fast as New and for a specific project with a deadline - then this can help a lot.

Yours Bengt W

I would suggest closing iMovie, then deleting the Preferences file, which can be found in your Users folder > [username] > Library > Preferences. move the com.apple.iMovie.plist file to the Trash, and delete it, then try opening iMovie again.

Thank you mfaasse! I think that worked! So easy, I hope it lasts...

Unfortunately for me, this was not a durable fix. In the end, I upgraded my System Software to OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) and iMovie '11 (version 9.0.8), and things have worked great since then. I was previously running OS X 10.6, and my computer (2008 MacBook Pro) was crashing a lot. The entire system is much more stable now.

Good luck.

I had already upgraded my system to OS X 10.8 and imovie 11. That's when things started to go slow for me. My whole computer used to be lighting fast booting up and closing down too, but not any more. It slowed my whole computer down. I am wondering if that means I need more RAM. I don't know much of anything about computers. I have a OS X 10.8.3, 2.3 GHZ Intel Core i5 processor and 4GB memory. It's an early 2011 MacBook Pro.

Hi

• Free Space on - Start-up (Mac OS) Hard Disk - How Much ?

Yours Bengt W

lori,

I've never regretted max'ing out the RAM on my computers. Please keep us posted on whether deleting the preference files provides a more durable solution for you than it did for me.

Bengt I am not sure this is answering your question... My Capacity is 319.21 GB Available 101.81 GB.

Used 217.4 GB on disk

Once I finally figured out how to locate the dang file, doing what mfasse said worked (so far) for me.

Thanks!!

here's how to find the file:

http://support.apple.com/kb/ts3249

I can't find the iMovie preferences file. I can go into the preferences folder ~/Library/Preferences but there is no com.apple.iMovie.plist file; the closest thing is come.apple.iMovieApp.plist