iMovie Theater will not show or play.

Question

Level 1

7 points

iMovie Theater will not show or play.

I have not opened iMovie in a while. But I have about 7 or 8 movies that I made and were saved to the iMovie Theater. When I go to the "Theater" tab in iMovie, it is empty. The cloud in the top right corner has the little unconnected symbol in it. I don't know why. When I click it, the iCloud window from System Preferences pops up. The iCloud Drive box is checked, and in the Options button, the iMovie is checked. But the Cloud symbol in iMovie never changes. As if it is not able to connect.

If I go into Finder / Movies, there is an iMovie Theater icon (that looks like tickets). If I Get Info on that icon, it's size shows it's 2GB, so there's movies there... my iMovie is just not connecting to it.

I am signed into iCloud.

I have an internet connection.

iMovie is checked in iCloud Drive.

I DO back up my laptop.

I spent ALOT of time making these movies.. and I just want to watch them again.

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6), Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015

Posted on Sep 17, 2016 12:13 PM

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Answer 1

ejs71 Author

Level 1

7 points

Sep 18, 2016 3:28 AM in response to Jim Wanamaker

Jim, Thanks for the reply. It did reset the preferences. But there is still nothing in the Theater.

Here's what I'm looking at.

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Answer 2

Sep 19, 2016 5:18 AM in response to ejs71

If you turn off iCloud Drive in iMovie do your movies appear in the Theater tab window? Have you tried signing out of iCloud and signing back in? In finder if you right click on the iMovie Theater package and select show package contents you can confirm your movies are there. It is a data based file so don't change anything. In safari go to the iCloud web site and see if iCloud Drive has your movies. See if any of this helps.

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Answer 3

ejs71 Author

Level 1

7 points

Sep 19, 2016 5:17 AM in response to Jim Wanamaker

Jim,

Again.. thank you for your help.

Unfortunately the movies are not showing after unchecking iCloud. The window is the same as above. I logged out of iCloud on my Mac, and restarted, and logged back in. Still nothing.

I don't see the iMovie icon even in iCloud.com.

Below is the Package Contents of my iMovie. The highlighted folder has all my movies as mp4's. It's 1.78 GB. Maybe I should Import each of them to iMovie? Honestly, I forgot about looking in Package Contents.. I really just wanted to see them again.. Not necessarily in iMovie. But it's very convenient to look at them there. Especially cause I play them on Apple TV on the iMovie app.

Let me know your thoughts..

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Answer 4

Sep 19, 2016 4:53 PM in response to ejs71

Well this is a strange problem since your movies are not in iCloud and don't appear in iMovie when you sign out of iCloud You might try reinstalling iMovie. If you just want to play your movies go into the Theater package and option drag each movie to the desk top and play with Quicktime. To reinstall iMovie drag it to the trash but don't empty the trash. Go into the App Store, sign in with your apple ID and click on purchases tab. iMovie should be there to download.

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Answer 5

Rich839

Level 8

48,156 points

Sep 19, 2016 6:07 PM in response to ejs71

To add to what Jim said, after you option drag your vid onto your desktop you could put it into a new iMovie project and share it back to Theater to see what happens. See if it appears in your Theater browser screen.

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Answer 6

Nov 10, 2016 6:13 AM in response to ejs71

I have the same issue. Only two of 8 iMovie files that are in my Theater will play. Six of the eight are visible but greyed out and I get the message, "Zip Lining could not be found." I have not changed or deleted anything other than update iMovie. This is distressing as I felt that iCloud would be a safe place to store these memories!

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Answer 7

Nov 10, 2016 4:03 PM in response to Kennard Yamada

In your Movies folder find the iMovie theater package. Right click on it and select show package contents. Do you see your movies there? If so then open iMovie holding down the command and option keys and delete preferences.

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Answer 8

Sep 17, 2016 8:22 PM in response to ejs71

Regardless of the iCloud issue you should see your movies in the THEATER Tab. First thing to try is open iMovie holding down the command and option keys and delete the preferences. See if that helps.

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Answer 9

AceNet

Level 1

43 points

Nov 24, 2016 10:29 PM in response to Kennard Yamada

I too am having the same issue... I tried Jim's solution below, with no success.

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