iPhone 6s photos won't work in iMovie 10.1

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Level 1

36 points

iPhone 6s photos won't work in iMovie 10.1

When I import photos taken with my iPhone 6s (I've tried importing them from both the Photos library and from the Mac desktop), they show up in my iMovie project media as stills. But when I drag them into my movie's timeline, they just play as a black frame — no photo.

I even tried opening these photos in Photoshop first, adjusting them slightly and re-saving, but I still get the same behavior when i re-import them into iMovie and drag them into my movie's timeline..

The photos I shot with my old iPhone 5 that are in my Photos app library import and play perfectly. I've never run into this problem before.

Has anybody else experienced this problem/found a fix?

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11)

Posted on Oct 15, 2015 1:38 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 30, 2015 3:38 PM in response to Dale Roe

I am having the same issue. I think it is all to do with whether the image has been downloaded "properly" (whatever that means) into Photos. I went to iCloud and saw that I had 1545 photos to download, so I'm assuming that my latest ones that I want to use in iMovie are right at the back of the queue. To your point, images from an older device (that probably downloaded long ago) are accessible - ironically around 50% of new ones are too. I think it is the ones that I have edited either on my phone or in Photos itself that are not coming down (but again this is not a consistent theory).

I'm currently resigned to waiting the 3 <<insert seconds/hours/days/weeks/months/years here>> it will take to download all my photos at 774k/sec, and when I have "0 photos to download" I will try again. Hmmm... at least I'm not under time pressure for a deadline on Wednesday...

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Answer 2

Dec 3, 2015 1:22 PM in response to j1m808d33

I'd been having this very, very frustrating issue too...

Not an ideal fix but if you open the photo in Preview, make it fullscreen and take a screenshot, this will load in iMovie.

Hope this helps!

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Answer 3

James Cude

Level 4

1,585 points

Jan 22, 2016 11:03 AM in response to Dale Roe

i had issues with black frames that were resolved with the 10.1.1 update. an official support article was also released with 10.1.1 addressing the issues with still images... If still images are solid green or black in the iMovie Viewer - Apple Support

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