Q: my imovie 11 is stuck on generating thumbnails and i have forced quit ever time i cant use it have restart everything and even downloaded it again but still the same problem

So :

- I've created a new iphoto lib

- opened imovie, nothing happened

- quit both

- open iphoto and add a video

- quit iphoto, open imovie

- imovie ask for iphoto video thumbs, i say OK, it's done in a few secs.

So this *works*, but won't work with my library

I'm now trying to rebuild for the 5th time in a week my iphoto library, next will be duplicating the lib, and trashing events to circumvent the problem and maybe solve it.

Lib duplicated.

Same bug at first, then remove all the photos before 2008. (Approx 6'000 photos from 20'000).

At least it started well, see if it ends.

The photos aren't causing the issue, video is.

You could make a Smart Album that displays all video in your library, export the videos to a folder, then delete them from your iPhoto library.

1. File>New Smart Album

2. Name the Album (Video, Movies, something like that)

3. Change the conditions to Photo - is - Movie and click OK

You'll now have a smart album with all the Video in your library

Select the album and click File>Export

Change the Kind to Original and click Export again in the bottom right corner of the Export window.

Choose your destination and click OK.

All video from your library will now be exported.

At this point you can delete all the video from the library.

By the photos i meant the events, which includes the videos. Sorry for not being clear.

Indeed, i already did that to remove the 3GP but thanks for the effort.

I also already have a smart "video" album.

I want : my movies to be stored in iPhoto and integrate with iMovie, so i'll find the bogus ones, fix them and hopefully it will be fixed forever as my post-2008 content is working well.

But your approach is better, i should (and maybe will) export all my videos and create a new library including just the vids. Than it will be even faster then copying the whole library (which took 15 mins for 120gb)

So it finished YES! Getting close from fixing this.

Next step :

export all my videos pre-2008 and import then event by event in a new library. Then iMovie should get stuck with some i can identify.

That sounds like it should work for you.

Good luck

Yes, thx a lot for your suggestions! Helped a lot.

I think it's fixed !!!!

2 f***** bogus video from 2006... i wait for the thumbs to be finished and i'll add a few notes about managing this issue from my experience.

Ok finished !!

I had to M4V videos from a set of 5 taken the same day which had bogus durations of 96 hours et 24 hours... iMovie would get stuck on them forever, iPhoto can play them partially. Once removed of the library everything is working as expected.

Glad to hear is working now

I just lefted the 11 hours and it worked. we really don't need to do this... I would like just to open imovie and see all  the videos in there in next operative system update. I everything that i use is mac i don't know why i still have to be coverting because this is basically a convert process

Short version hint:  If you have 'zero byte' .dv files in your Events folder delete them and start again to avoid getting stuck on Generating Thumbnails.

Long version:

iMovie '11 on MacBook Pro Retina Late 2012 with OS/X (I am still afraid to upgrade)

For what it's worth, I am new at iMovie and have been trying to go through all the camcorder Hi8 tapes from the kids growing up.  I've just been capturing little bits here and there from each tape, starting and stopping and ffwd and rewinding a lot.  Frequently, iMovie dies.  When I reopen iMovie it gets stuck on generating Thumbnails.  I force quit, and then it seems to start fine.  Next, I brought a few events and projects over from another external drive.  It got stuck many times on generating thumbnails for my events, but seemed to be making progress if I force quit and restarted, eventually moving on to the next event after many open/forcequit iterations.

After looking at several discussions on this issue, I started looking around in my Events folder, and found a bunch of 'zero byte' .dv clips.  I think this must have happened everytime iMovie crashed.  When I deleted all the 'zero byte' .dv files, iMovie started happily.