Q: Images/stills turn black in iMovie since El Capitan upgrade

TThanks so much for the detailed answer. I gave up last night and restored from my Time machine to a pre El Capitan backup; all is now working well. Not a long term solution though.

Tried importing photo's via the ImageCapture app and whilst they imported ok - I still had the same issues in iMovie.

Now to uninstall and reinstall iMovie and see what happens.

Not hopeful.

Be interested to hear how you get on. I had been thinking about buying a new Mac mini - but it would come with El Capitan and potential movie editing disaster. I've had no trouble at all since going back to Mavericks and iMovie 11 (9.0.9).

I'm on an mid 2007 iMac, OSX El Capitan,and having the same issue with blacked out photos when bringing them into iMovie 10.1.

At first I thought that it is time to spend the big dough for a new iMac, than I found all these people complaining about this issue and Apple being very conveniently quiet.

Making home movies, a blend of videos and stills, was the main reason I switched to an iMac 8 years ago and I really do not want to go back to Microsoft but for some 2-3 years now I feel that we are all being sucked into Applesoft, things just do not work as well and seamlessly as the did.

There are several workarounds but everybody knows that this is not the real solution, and Apple is silent ........and just counts the money.

I used image capture by accident. To make an iMovie of a birthday party I used image capture for the invitation and the address. The photos I took at the party turned out black on iMovie but were ok in photos. When the image capture of the invitation worked in the iMovie time line, I decided to image capture the photos to the desktop.  Then i would select the image capture photo and drag it from the desktop to the timeline. The timeline gave me the option to replace or insert, etc. I used replace. I used both photos and videos and the project turned out great.  Another heads up; I took the video in 4K and it did not look good playing the time line. However, it turned out perfectly when I shared it as a small movie and a youtube video. It is kind of a pain but it worked until the product is fixed. Also I just upgraded to El Capitan last week.

I am having the same problem as everyone else.

I just noticed that virtually all the photo's that show up black are those imported from a camera different from mine - I was combining my photo's from my iPhoto library with those imported into iPhoto from a friend. All photos's are about 3-4 MB JPEGs. My photo's were from a Nikon D80 and my friend's were form a Canon EOS Rebel. Not sure whether the issue is in importing photo's from a CD/DVD or thumbdrive versus importing directly from a camera's smart card.

I had the same problem, UNTIL I switched over to the latest version of iMovie (10.1). I was using 9.0.8. The photos now look/work fine. Hopefully it works for you all as well?

Hello All,

I was having a similar Issue in iMovie 09. So I Upgraded to 10.1 hoping to alleviate my blacked out photo issue.

MY SOLUTION:

Open the desired still frames in Preview and goto TOOLS > Resize > "Fit Into" > 1024x768 . Save.

And now I can drag and drop the stills into my video. It's worked on all that I've tried and now I can continue to make videos once again.

El Capitan, Mid-2010 MBP, Imovie 10.1

The same is happening to me.   I spent $99. a year for a one to one membership for 3 years and spent that time learning how to do iMovie 9 (yellow icon).  then they upgraded to the 10 version (purple icon) and everything is a disaster.  I have spent more hours trying to make a simple video with stills, etc. that I need to give up or go to a different computer.  the other was so much easier, only because this program has so many editing screw-ups.  I spent an hour at the Genius Bar and they had to close down my old iMovie and create a new one.   Now , 10% of the photos I'm downloading are black.!   I could scream.  I'm fed up.  I need to make 3 DVD's by Christmas, which usually takes me a day for each and I'm still working on the first $#%@ one with pictures turning black.  Does the PC have anything compariable to iMovie.  it was a lot better until they started to mess with it.  

I like to know why it happened in the first place!   It should not be happening at all.  (the photos turning black.)

Howdy,

Your solution also works for me but as many have said we shouldn't need to workaround.

Thanks for sharing this tip.

I will pass along to the AppleCare person i have working on it and see if that helps his train of thought.

Regards
Scott

Just started happening to me, I'm editing in iMovie 10.0.5 with OSX 10.9.5 and freeze frames are showing up black and only for 1sec. I was only using this feature just over week ago and it was working great and I haven't done any upgrades.

Frankly I'm getting sick and tired of Apples stuff ups and their lack of awareness of these issues. Get to and fix it please

Its not restricted to El Capitan. I'm running OSX 10.9.5 Mavericks with iMovie 10.0.5 and its doing the same thing but only with freeze frame its now just black, where as 2 weeks ago it was working fine, c'mon Apple get your act together

Having same issue.  Can't export or playback movies i've made before capitan upgrade.  pretty F-ing disappointing, considering for the longest time Apple stuff just  worked.  last few years this is no longer the case. will try MillerTimeBMW method.

Most interesting thing I've found out (having spoken directly to an Apple person assigned to my case) is that they, Apple,  DO NOT review/lookat/investigate anything on these forums.

My case number is the only one they have on file related to this problem that many seem to be suffering.

He said that people should create a 'case' via their help/support and once you have a case number they will investigate.

My experience from that point of view has been positive so I would encourage everyone to take the time and that will add pressure on Apple to investigate and fix.

As an update on my problem i sent to Apple 9 photos for them to use for testing. On my Mac the 2 iPhone 6 photo's worked fine in iMovie however the 7 from our Canon EOS40d did not. He tested them yesterday and had no trouble with any photo and was able to preview the movie no problems.

So, next step is to wipe the machine clean and reinstall from scratch all applications starting with iMovie (and then restore my files from backup).

When this is done I'll keep you posted on the outcome.