iMovie 10.0 Video rendering error: -50?

I feel like Ive tried everything to get my iMovie to share without starting again. This is so frustrating! Im using iMovie 10.0.5 and its a brand new laptop. I converted all my files that were MTS from my video camera to MOV files then started to create my project but whenever I try to share nothing works. This is so frustrating honestly I don't know what to do now.

A tedious but easy solution is before importing into iMovie, open the clip in Quick Time then export the clip and import that clip to iMovie. Works every time even on clips that previously caused the -50 error.

It may seem too simple but the first rule of thumb is to quit the application and restart and if that doesn't work then restart your computer. That's what I did and all worked fine after that.

I did what you said and it didn't work for me.

I was getting the same error in iMovie 10.0.5 when trying to share to a file. I started scrubbing through all the video clips and stills and noticed as I moved between two particular clips just a sliver of green frame appear that did not anywhere else in the project. Deleting those two clips with the green frame solved my problem!

HI there.

FOr or all you people that have this rendering error !!

i Found away around it that works 100%.

FIrst of of all make sure that all your recorded content that you wish to use is in the same format.

Secondly. Make sure all your picture are able to fit the video out put (16:9 or what ever scale your using.

NOw ow the big trick is , take your time, do not rush. Make your timeline only 30 minutes at a time and save to desktop.

REpeat this process until you have your entire movie saved in 30 minute intervals then clear your time line and put all these mini movies in and put then all together to form your movie.

IF your movie is shorter then do it in smaller increments and it will work.

OMine other thing, if a particular section fails, try and watch this section to see where it stops as this will tell you what it is getting stuck on.

IN my case it was a song that I chose that caused all the problems and I had mp4's mixed with mov files.

SO I converted everything to MP4 and removed the song and replaced it with another and my movie is now finished.

HOpe this helps.

Okay, had a lot of students doing iMovie projects this week. A couple of them got the dreaded "Video rendering error: -50" error, or something similar. So, what I ended up doing was running whatever little bit of movie was created during the export process to see where iMovie was aborting the export process. I then looked at the student project for the offending clip. We copied the original clip onto the desktop from their iPhone, and then opened the corrupted video clip in Handbrake. We then cross-converted it to h.264 MP4 and then replaced the old clip in iMovie with the new clip created by Handbrake. It still had the visual artifacts, but the new clip was no longer corrupt and iMovie was able to finally export the project to a file.

tldr;

1. Open the aborted video to find out where iMovie is faulting.

2. Locate the offending clip in iMovie.

3. Open the source clip that was used in iMove in Quicktime, Handbrake, or something similar and export/cross-convert the clip into a new movie file. This should fix the corrupted parts of the original clip that're preventing iMovie from doing its thing.

4. Replace the old iMovie clip with the new one and it should now be able to export the iMovie project.

Hey fellow editors in frustration.

I have been at a course for work for 10-weeks which took me away from family. I have taken the opportunity to FINISH 20 years of unedited footage and get it into Theater to share with family and friends.

MOST of them work flawlessly. But about 3 of my 40 or so videos give the -50 rendering error.

What a pain.

Well reading Clyde's recommendation helped me narrow down my issue.

The files I had problems with are from some many-times-converted files (from VHS back back back in the day) through PC and now Mac.

The problem is with a single frame of total GREEN. The frame throws the rendering and generates the -50 error.

Using Share to File you can watch up to the point where the video freezes (the sound will continue for a few more seconds beyond that frozen frame).

If you edit out that frame it will get past that point and move onto the next green freeze frame (if there are more). My 12 minute video had three.

Once removed it Shares just fine!

Whew. Glad that is solved (for me at least...YMMV).

-Murph

gedeyenlite, Thank you, this solved my problem. I had a green frame at the beginning of my movie. I removed it and all worked.

Many thanks.

This seems like my error as well, although all the clips I have imported are from the same device. Still, when I get this -50 error, if I go to the file that bombed during the File share, figure out where the end of that clip is in my project and then trim the clip to that point, the share will work fine. It's a terrible solution, since sometimes I want to keep the part of the clip that seems to cause the issue. This is a horrible bug in iMovie - if it can play the clip, why can't it share it?

Thanks - this was exactly my issue as well! After reading your post I had to do another video, and I've gotten in the habbit of saving to a file after I add each clip. When I got the -50 error, I went to that last clip and examined each frame. Sure enough, there was a frame that was weird - mine wasn't a solid color, but it was like a green filter on top of the frame. I removed that frame and it saved fine. Thanks a TON!

Wow after hours of scrolling the net this did it for me. My movie had about 4 green screens through it and deleting them fixed it. Not sure how the green got there in the first place but after tonights marathon effort I dont care - its fixed. Thanks heaps.

Same here - file share ends at the point of the corrupted clip. Removed .5 second section and then it worked. Was going to import the clip again, but found that the error was on my original. Seems like the problem was with the camera, not the app. At least, that was true for me.

Hi all,

this day an friend of mine had the same problem; imovie did not share or upload any movie/file anywere.

It was hard to find out but i think we have solved it: make absolute sure there isnt any 'corrupt' file in your movie.

e.g.: we found out that imovie wasn't able to convert or deal with an avi-file.

To solve this problem, convert the avi-file with an free convert programm (downloaded for free from the apple store) to an .mov file.

Once addded the .mov files to the movie all went go straight uploading at facebook, sharing files everywhere we wanted.

Hope this will help you all out as well.

(just created an apple account to share this 🙂 )

Have an good day or night now!

greetzz from Holland

Folks - just a quick note - iMovie wasn't sharing anything when I tried to create a new project from new video from my Alesis VideoTrak (MP4 export format). I opened the raw MP4 video in QuickTime 10.4 and it wouldn't play - though it edited up just fine in iMovie. So, I exported the QT non-playing file to .MOV, reimported into iMovie, edited and it shared just fine. I have another MP4 raw video to edit, so if you don't see me respond to this, it worked there too!