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iMovie 10.0 Video rendering error: -50?

No matter what I option I choose, I can't share my movie in iMovie 10.0. It always fails with a Video rendering error: -50. What am I doing wrong?

MacBook Pro (15-inch Late 2008), OS X Mavericks (10.9)

Posted on Oct 24, 2013 6:27 PM

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62 replies

Oct 25, 2013 5:17 AM in response to damongaspee

Hi. I had a similar problem on video rendering. Although I don't see an "-50" error appearing, after clicking share as file in the menu and entering the file name and save location, the loading will stop and nothing seems to happen afterwards. Later I realized there is a "Loading circle" near the upper right corner that indicates rendering video. After waiting for a while, i get the message that sharing was successful. Hope that helps.

Oct 27, 2013 10:09 AM in response to damongaspee

After some more experimentation I think I've nailed it down. Turns out some of the clips trigger the error even on brand new projects. When I recreated a movie in '10 the same error happened. However, I did not reimport the clips. Maybe reimporting the clips and the events might help.


But rendering, removing the clip that stops the rendering and re-rendering I managed to get iMovie to render a movie without the error.


FVIW all the offending clips where from a Nikon DSLR.

Oct 28, 2013 6:35 AM in response to damongaspee

I'm seeing this same issue in a project that I created in the previous version of iMovie. Fortunately I had already exported it in the previous version, but I did some tweeks in the new version that I'd like to save. I have clips imported from my camcorder and from my camera, but you're theory that it is tied to a particular clip is probably a good one as the export seems to stop at the same place every time.

Oct 28, 2013 7:22 AM in response to damongaspee

So I am having the smae problem. I sucessfully shared a 90 minute movie with 22 clips in it to a file. Now when I go to share individual clips, some work and some fail with -50 error message. The other thing I have noticed is that with each failed 'share' parts of the movie to be rendered end up sitting in the iMovie DataBase making it larger and larger. I suspect we are all dealing with a major bug here. What is the mechanism for communicationg this bug to Apple. At this point I am dead in the water and iMovie 10 is essentially useless to me.

Oct 29, 2013 9:16 PM in response to damongaspee

Yep, sounds like a lot of people are having the same problem. FWIW, we should specify several things in this thread so we can start *maybe* nailing down what the cause of the issue may be. A buddy of mine was able to import and share an iMovie video just fine with video clips taken from an iPhone 4 or 5 (not sure which). My story is not quite so lucky.


I had created a 20-minute video composed of both still camera photos as well as raw video clips taken with the Canon 5D mk II. I also added Garageband voice recordings and music from iTunes into the iMovie project. The photos and video were exported out of Lightroom from my Windows PC onto an external hard drive which I ended up connecting via USB to my MBP. The files initially read ok, but I did notice that some of the files, both video and still images, were not completed during media import into iMovie. I did not bother to try and re-export the media from my Windows PC, but in hindsight, I probably should have tried that.


Regardless, after futzing with the timeline and adding audio/still images/video and sharing out to a file, I got the -50 error. Other Apple discussion threads seem to indicate very short (less than 1.5 seconds) video clips would cause an issue. This was not the case for me -- I had a sequence where a string of still shots each lasted about 0.7 seconds. I removed those and tried to re-share/export. No joy there.


I just finished deleting all of the video clips in the project, and tried to re-export again. Again, no joy. Not sure what the cause is yet. Earlier on in the project, I had tried to export and did so successfully - at that point, I'd had maybe one or two video clips, some buit-in sounds that came with iMovie 10.0, and a couple of stills. Total length of that effort was maybe about a minute and a half.


That's what I've been able to record up to this point.

Oct 29, 2013 9:31 PM in response to damongaspee

So after a lot of experimentation I think I may have identified a casue and cure. The cause seems to be a corrupted file strucutre in the iMovie Database. This is probably caused by a share process being cancelled or the program craping out. I created a new Database and re-imported the clips and then started shareing again and voila it seems to work. You can inspect the contents of the iMovie database by taking the "show Package Contents" within the file structure for the event you are in you will see a folder for the movies being shared. Partially shared movies and fully shared movies are in this folder. You can tell if the movies was shared because there is a plist file. Cleaning up this folder did not help me. In the end I need to create a new iMovie Database. I think the secret is not to overload the application so it craps out. It seems to do a lot of work in the background without much notification.

Oct 30, 2013 6:00 AM in response to damongaspee

My project was started in the previous version of iMovie, not sure if everyone else is in that same situation. My photo clips and some of the video came from an iPhoto library that was on a different computer that I connect to over the network. I also used video imported from a camcorder. Those clips are on the physical computer. Fortunately, I had already exported a finished product from the previous version. At this point, I'm thinking about putting all of my project compenents in one place and then recreating my project completely in the new version just to see if that fixes it. In all honesty though, I shouldn't have to jump through hoops like that, but I'm just curious to see if that makes a difference.

Oct 30, 2013 6:52 PM in response to DA40Pilot

Can you tell me the directory in which you found this:


"You can inspect the contents of the iMovie database by taking the "show Package Contents" within the file structure for the event you are in you will see a folder for the movies being shared. Partially shared movies and fully shared movies are in this folder. You can tell if the movies was shared because there is a plist file. Cleaning up this folder did not help me. In the end I need to create a new iMovie Database."


I'm not seeing it.

Nov 1, 2013 5:41 AM in response to hung2k

Yep, remove the old. The bones of the old iMovie may still be there too. Close iMovie, go to your Movies directory, delete "iMovies Library.imovielibrary" (I also deleted "iMovie Theater.theater"), open iMovie, it creates them when it is opened.


IMHO, really poor way to have to fix something. i literally just had to do this. iMovie has gotten past rendering...but I lost about 2 hours work on the movie i had just put together. If this was a productivity enhancement it failed, miserably.

iMovie 10.0 Video rendering error: -50?

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