I updated to El Capitan in the middle of working on an iMovie project using iMovie 11. After the update, any photo that I had brought in from iPhoto will go black when reviewing my project video.
iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11)
comments on Dec 16, 2015 5:31 PM - Check in your Applications folder for a folder named "iMovie (previous version)". That's where mine is.
If that doesn't work try here:
comments on Dec 16, 2015 5:34 PM - Rich's question - Do all photo pulled into iMovie v10 show black both in the Event Library and in the movie line? - Answer not clear. When you Update an event from iMovie v9, iMovie v10 creates an Event in the iMovie Library. If you Update a project it will try to create an Event Library for that event and pull the photos from the project into the library. Thus your photos are now duplicated from where they are on your HD (you have 2 of that photo. The one in the original location and one in the iMovie Library.) My question is, "If you create an Event and drag one of these photos that show black into that Event, does the photo in the library show okay, or is it black there?
ok found the old version but it has a line threw it so I will download the older one. will it run?
Sorry, I didn't read this before commenting on your previous comments.
That is strange. Acts just like iMovie v9 does with El Capitan. I do recall others having this problem but to date I have not seen a solution.
So have you indeed upgraded to El Capitan? Because if you have you will NOT be able to run iMovie v9 correctly.
No I am staying with yosemite for now . seems like a lot more issue then just iMovie if I upgrade.😕
Okay, I need to get my head on straight. This discussion started as "After updating to El Capitan, all of the photos I added to a project that I was working on goes black when reviewing the video." so your situation is a little different in that you just need to get iMovie v9 back and running. Hopefully you can do that. I'm surprised that your previous version has a line through it. My previous iMovie HD has the line through it but my iMovie 9.0.9 is fine.
An interesting sideline: evidently some have found success with El Capitan and iMovie v9. Check out
Re: imovie 10.0.9 crashes after El Capitan update - in response to tfsutton0638
I had this problem too and because of that, did not update my 2 video processing workhorses.
I just updated to the latest 10.11.2 on my MBP and now iMovie 11 (9.09) works as before, no crashing and no upside down thumbnails!
I have not tried this yet but I will do so tonight and see what happens.
I would like to make a suggestion in an attempt to escalate the problem at Apple Support. Open iMovie 9.0 and click "iMovie" > Provide iMovie Feedback. This will open a new tab in your Internet browser that is a Web form for reporting bugs to the iMovie team at Apple. If enough users send in bug reports, perhaps a fix will be forthcoming for the blacked-out photos problem.
Okay, I did the update to OS 10.11.2 and it DID NOT change anything. Still black photos and the preview of clips when skimming goes upside down.
The only thing I have noticed is that iMovie v9 now runs VERY SLOWLY! As do some other functions on my computer.
I went back to my old iMac running Snow Leopard and it works fine and is very snappy on all functions.
I was hoping that by exporting a project (.rcproject file) to .m4v format that the black photos would appear as normal while playing back the new file outside of iMovie. No luck. The black photos export as black scenes. This is very frustrating. Has anyone else contacted Apple with a bug report?
Question on one specific comment you made:
Then I read the line in the ad. for iMovie v10 and it said one could "Update Projects and Events" without destroying the original files in order to continue using iMovie v9. I took Apple at their word and upgraded. All seemed to be okay.
I am using El Capitan 10.11.2. I was using iMovie 10.0.6 and upgraded to 10.1. I don't like 10.1 at all and have recovered 10.0.6 from an external drive. However, because I opened my previous library in 10.1 I am no longer able to open it in 10.0.6. I was told on the forum that the libraries get converted once opened in 10.1 and cannot be read by earlier versions or recovered. Thus I cannot continue using my library on my previous version of iMovie, contrary to your comment, I believe. Are you saying that you found a way to open the original files and continue using again in a previous (in your case v9) version after having them "updated" and opened in v10?
"Are you saying that you found a way to open the original files and continue using again in a previous (in your case v9) version after having them "updated" and opened in v10?"
This is a special case. When upgrading from iMovie 9 to iMovie 10 the iMovie 9 Projects and Events folders (it does not work with libraries) are left intact so that one can still use them in iMovie 9. Any editing done in iMovie 10 won't be visible in iMovie 9 though.
Geoff.
Hope the bellow can be of some help:
After upgrading to Capitan I had the same problem using either iMovie 9 or iMovie 10.
Then came the Capitan upgrade to 10.11.2 which I tried to do and - as many others- couldn't, because it froze my computer.
To solve this Capitan upgrade problem, I rebooted from Time Machine choosing also the "First Aid" option while rebooting.
Surprisingly, there was a change on the iMovie performance: iMovie 10 works now smoothly.
But for iMovie 9 nothing changed, pictures stay black when uploaded.
UPDATE TO ALL:
I just today had the "Black Photo" problem pop up.
I checked several discussions and tried several fixes. The one I found to be the solution for me was indeed the high resolution of the photo. I had the photo set to 3840 x 2560. I reduced to 3300 and still no luck. Dropped it to 3200 and all is well. I did notice that the preview in the event would show the photo but if I skim over it, it would go black.
I then went back to iMovie v9 on my old iMac and that same photo works fine. Interesting that Apple would somehow have introduced this limitation on iMovie 10.1. Especially as they now have introduced 4K video. Seems more logical that they would at least allow 4K photos.
GeeD; have you experienced this problem as well?
"Seems more logical that they would at least allow 4K photos." Indeed.
"GeeD; have you experienced this problem as well?"
I have not seen any problems at all with 10.1 neither on my 2013 Mac Pro nor on my 2007 MacMook Pro (both running OS 10.11.2) but I'm using FCP X these days and only fire up iMovie when checking things for the iMovie support community. I think I need to find some time to make a new project in iMovie 10.1 and see whether any of these problems show up on either machine.
Geoff
Thanks for the tip! 🙂
After reducing 2448x3696 photos to 1457x2200 it worked for me on IMovie 10.
Did not work on iMovie 9.
Have installed El Capitan 10.11.1 (the 10.11.2 upgrade freezes my computer) 😠 .
After updating to El Capitan, all of the photos I added to a project that I was working on goes black when reviewing the video.
