Images/stills turn black in iMovie since El Capitan upgrade

As far as I found the "Upgrade" to El Caputan is nothing but a POS. Same sort of issues with the year ago "update" to Garageband. It's made recording impossible for me. I hoped the upgrade to El Cap would solve that issue but instead now there are issues with my photo programs and iMovie. The programmers at Apple messed up perfectly good programs while offering nothing new that is anything better. Apple programmers should get it together or they are going to loose millions of faithful users.

For me firstly about few months ago only solution after trying many from web was changing duration of still images in iMovie.

Now it didn't work so I've tried again everything and many more and just at last almost trying another application I've noticed that images from other devices which are displayed OK are 2999px maximum but my pictures from iPhone which are not are 3200px. I've changed that for multiple images in Preview to 2800 and voila it works!

For me firstly about few months ago only solution after trying many from web was changing duration of still images in iMovie.

Now it didn't work so I've tried again everything and many more and just at last almost trying another application I've noticed that images from other devices which are displayed OK are 2999px maximum but my pictures from iPhone which are not are 3200px. I've changed that for multiple images in Preview to 2800 and voila it works!

Hopefully this solves everyones' problem with black screen where photos should be in imovie 11. While experimenting with the same frustrating problem, and nearly taking a sledghammer to my iMac, I thought I'd try a different way of "importing" the photos I needed into my timeline. In Photos, I selected all of my needed pictures using shift+click or command+click, then copied to clipboard using command+C, then pasted into the imovie media pane using command+V. I then could either drag each photo where I wanted, or drag the whole batch into the timeline where needed, and Pesto! Pictures showed up in the video preview pane and I could then successfully finish the project.

I'm using imovie 10.1.6 - after reading a few online articles about this which never truely resolved if for me I decided to do a lot of experiments. Even having more or less resolved the issue, I still find it weird that 2 out of 7 of my initial jpg imports worked! My initial imports were jpg's about 3200px wide. I converted to png, psd and pdf formats which had mixed results but I decide to still with jpg because the file size was always the smallest. So I start reducing the width first 3000px wide then 2000. Ah 2000 works so I narrorw in on it... 2900... 2100 and so on and i find that 2300 works but not 2400! so I'm recommending a jpg of width 2300px. that's what works for me and I hope this helps a few people.

I am having the same problem with El Capitan OS X 10.11 and iMovie 9.0.9. I need the export capabilities I had with iMovie 9 which I don't have with iMovie 10. Its of no use to me. My solution is downgrade to Yosemite so I have use of iMovie 9 again which I'm doing now.

Hi There,

I seem to have the same issue since I upgraded to iMovie 10.1. I just finished a video with version 10 no problem, but now 10.1 doesn't allow me to preview non-iphone photos. I tried upgrading to el capitan in hoping it would work, but unfortunately, it didn't. Pretty frustrating since now I can't make a video without stills. Videos seem to not have an issue.

Same issue here! Upgraded to 10.1 and imported pictures from iPhoto are showing up black. A real PAIN!

WORK AROUND SOLUTION: It would seem that iMovie 10.1 has a photo dimension restriction. After trying to save the file in different media formats with no luck, I then decided to limit the photo size. I reduced the image to the intended dimension of the video (i.e. 1080p is 1080 pixels wide) and voila, it worked like a charm.

There is a known problem with Color Profiles in Preview - El Capitan that Apple is working on.

All users with this problem contact Apple support or give bug feedback to http://www.apple.com/feedback/

Note" the color profile one Preview Poster mentioned is sRGBIEC61966-2.1

You are correct that you set the dimensions when you export but I assume you would know what your desired dimensions will be before you export as you're making the video. Therefore you can reduce the file size and dimensions size of your photos to a minimum of the maximum desired dimensions of your video to avoid a loss of quality. For example I had images that were greater the 6,000 pixels wide which is excessive for a 1080p movie unless you are zooming in with Ken Burns. I'm not suggesting this work around is a good thing, to be honest I hate it, but you do what it takes to get the job done. As far as upgrading from iMovie 8, I would as I found the later releasea such as iMovie 10.0.9 very stable on Yosemite. I like the layout of iMovie 10.1 better but still I'm shocked apple can't get photo's to upload into their essential software. I mean this is a rookie mistake and says something about the quality of Apple Software going down. if Apple really wanted to impress their customers they would regularly comment in their discussion board and implement features users are asking for as opposed to intentionally removing software to force our hand into buying a newly released device. (i.e. Front Row on a Mac mini vs. Apple TV)

Does anyone have an answer to this question - i.e., how to restore the still clips to projects in iMovie 9 when running it on OX 10 El Capitan?

Exactly the same issue as you with iMovie 10.1.

Given there are many of us its clearly not operator error so how do we escalate this with Apple to get it resolved...?

I have a callback with Apple Support on Wednesday 11th Nov, morning so will post results then.