My IMovie over the past two months has slowly declined in usability- from thumbnails, audio ripped from video, to event footage even playing, everything is effectively ceasing to work. Updated IMovie, New mac. Any suggestions?

Question

My IMovie over the past two months has slowly declined in usability- from thumbnails, audio ripped from video, to event footage even playing, everything is effectively ceasing to work. Updated IMovie, New mac. Any suggestions?

I've had and have been successfully using IMovie for six months now, but in the past one or two months, it's started to slowly decline in it's usability. First, no thumbnails would work, in the project library or in the event clips. three weeks ago, i tried stabilizing a clip, and changing the speed, imovie not only corrupted that file, but stopped functioning entirely. I had to go into the finder and remove the project (under googles suggestion) for imovie to even begin to function again. Then i stopped being able to rip audio tracks from video inside projects. And a week ago, i stopped being able to play video from the event clips. I don't know what the **** i'm supposed to do with imovie now that i can't do with Youtube's on board editor. haha.

I'm not terribly experienced with Macs, but i'm familiar with technology and can usually trouble shoot things, either by myself using common sense, or good ol' trusty Google. Which has led me here, since my issue seems to be more with the software getting old and crippled (in a human sense) than any issue with my knowledge or trouble shooting. If you could even direct me where to go to solve this issue, that in itself would be a great help.

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.4), 2.4 GHz intel core I7, 8gb memory.

Posted on Aug 15, 2012 2:06 PM

Reply

Answer 1

tu71586

Level 1

8 points

Aug 15, 2012 7:39 PM in response to Stylerprofyler

When software has gone wonky on me when it previously had worked just fine, I do a couple of things:

- update software/ os (which you have done -- incidentally, did problems start with Mac OS 10.7?)

- repair permissions using Disk Utility

- check to make sure i don't have RAM that has gone bad

- make sure my hard drive is working fine (use Disk Utility to verify/ repair disk)

- run virus scan

Those are my ideas so far, I'm sure other people have a more comprehensive list of things to try.

Reply

Answer 2

Aug 15, 2012 8:05 PM in response to Stylerprofyler

Usually, iMovie either works great or it crashes. In that case, I would recommend looking for incompatible QuickTime components like 3ivx. Or reinstall iMovie. Or reinstall OSX.

However, in your case, with a slow decline, it sounds like over time you have accumulated a large number of swap files, and these may be quite large. If this is the issue, you can fix it by shutting down and restarting your Mac.

I have 16 GB of memory, but I still run a free utility called Memory Stick. When I get over 6 or 7 swap files, or when the last swap file is 4GB or larger, I will reboot my Mac.

I know this sounds obvious, but it is the only thing I can think of that matched your symptoms. If you are in the habit of closing your laptop without shutting it down, this could happen over time.

Reply