Update after two Apple iApps specialists spent 1.5 hours on the phone with me: There are 3 "poison pills" (that we know of) that will cause the crash if any of the three is part of the movie: Picture-in-picture, side-by-side, or a circle open/close transition. Otherwise, no crash. The specialist made a movie on his own computer, containing the poison pills, but he exported to Quicktime without a crash. There is at least one report in the threads of a problem like mine. Thus, some Gremlin is causing this, in some computers. The iApps specialist was curioius to know whether a lot of people have this problem, or only a few. (If a lot, then it is worth submitting to the engineers to fix.) He said if you have this problem, call Apple. I asked if such people should post a "Me too!" on this thread. He said no, better to call Apple and report it. So that's the story. I can live without those poison pills in my export-to-quicktime movies. I am just a consumer, not a pro, and I can live with it. But it would be nice if Apple could fix this.