imovie not exporting video to file (error 10004)

10.0.7 would load the project. Back to 10.1.7. and guess what... like after several failed attempts, there was indeed a finished movie on the desktop and indeed it was too short. It failed to render the last clip. After removing the first second (an doing some cutting in the audio to keep it lipsync'd) it successfully rendered my video.
I was wondering... could it be that the issue all starts with video files that were re-encoded on the MAC. In my case: I have video material from my SONY camera and have to manually encode them (MPG to m4v) on the MAC before I can import them in iMovie. (to do so I select the files in the finder and do right click and select: Encode Selected Video Files - instead of opening every single one in Quicktime and export...).
Does that sound to - any of you - something that might be part of the problem?

This removing of the first couple of nano seconds has not worked for me at all, again even on previously exported files. It is now a useless app; and Apple do not seem bothered about fixing it, especially as they probably want you to upgrade to some pro software.

Ok, I managed to get the video to share.

Here is what I believe to be the problem everyone . . .

The new iMovie does not seem to be able to work with PPTs that have been exported as .MOV in original format. Meaning, when the PPT .MOV files are imported into iMovie they come in with a BLANK FRAME added to the beginning of them. This was not an issue before the update but now it halts export.

My video had a million of these PPT .MOV files which I had gone through and manually clipped shorter to remove that first blank frame from each one. It still wouldn't export completely and I went to the section that it stopped exporting at and discovered that when certain transitions are in place, they add back in parts of slides even if they have been clipped, so a previously clipped PPT .MOV had actually been automatically added back in via the transition feature. I just deleted the transitions and it was able to export.

It is definitely a serious bug that Apple needs to fix but in the meantime, if you can live without transitions and have the time to manually clip the first frame from every PPT .MOV then it should work.

It's very time consuming though, Apple needs to put in a bug fix ASAP.

This didn't work for me. 😟 I've been re-editing and exporting this particular video for over a year with zero issues until I upgraded to High Sierra and the latest release of iMovie.

It happens 7 seconds into the video. I tried trimming the first few frames, but it didn't help. It's a single file with no transitions, so my only option now is to move the whole project to Premiere Pro CC...which I really don't want to do if possible. 😟

I'm also having a problem exporting. My issue is a bit different, but on one occasion I received the same error messages. The rest of the time I'm simply given the error that imovie can't export the file. When I go to the folder where I tried to place it, there is 7 seconds of audio only. The weirdest part is that the clip I'm using there is an 18 second clip, so I'm puzzled as to why it would randomly pick that spot and only export the audio. I had to use another program to create the clip so I could get the effect I wanted. Maybe I need to save it in a different format.

I miss the old days when Apple stuff worked.

I wish I knew why that worked. I've tried everything. I finally made a new copy of the first clip I used, and chopped off the 1st second. I also adjusted all transitions so there would be no black frames just to be safe. It has taken a lot of time and work, but that seems to be working. Thanks!

Very helpful, thank you ! Seems that faulty clips have a dark line near the top of the clip in the timeline. I managed to replace them and think all’s well now. But i never had this problem before - was it caused by upgrading iMovie to a new version ? VERY frustrating ! Good luck everyone.

I am using high sierra & latest version of iMovie. Created a 1+hr movie which included 3 clips from my Nest outdoor camera. Got error message when exporting to Theatre. Removed transitions before those clips & was able to export. Didn’t have to modify clips

Hi,

Probably good to update to current High Sierra and iMovie 10.1.8. See if that cures it.

Aside from that, I would first try opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys, and selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears.

If the above doesn't cure it, there likely is some corruption in the project. You might try copying your media into a newly created project and see if it shares out.

Failing that, you will need to locate the corruption in the project and remove it. Could be a corrupt font in a title, a transition, a bad frame in a clip, clips with varying frame rates and/or formats, and audio issue, etc. To isolate the problem, try duplicating your project and sharing out half of it. If it shares out O.K, the corruption is in the other half. Duplicate your project again and share out half of the corrupted half. Keep doing this until you have isolated the issue to a manageable range of clips. Then scroll through them frame by frame, using the arrow key on your keyboard, and look for things like flashes, black frames, pixelation, and anything else that looks suspicious. Change fonts in titles. Change transitions. If you find something, delete it and try sharing out again.

Grunt work, I know.

-- Rich

I have the same error, only imported one clip. Have tried importing other clips in new projects, to no avail.

Am on the latest OS. Problem is iMovie *****. It was simple to use and then it was upgraded to this newer version. Nothing intuitive about it. Also, going to export the file, filing it under "Sharing", what is this, kindergarten?

For me also the transitions were the problem. The page turnover transition did not work between some of the clips.

I would recommend to first delete the transitions before doing anything else.

Thanks for your tipp!

Wow. I don't know why this would work, but it does. I literally just cut the first 0.4 seconds of my project that wouldn't export, and now it's working. Thank you!!

Same issue here. Started as soon as I updated imovie and macOS. Testing removing transitions now. Thank you for the suggestion.