iMovie "Exporting has failed", any project

Here's the thread that I referred to that dealt with your issue. See if anything in there helps you. There was a successful resolution by a poster that used the Onyx app to resolve it.

iMovie 10.1.7 Export Failed

-- Rich

Hi,

The error message indicates that the problem has something to do with the format "lpcm". That is an audio format that stands for Linear PCM (Linear Pulse Code Modulation). I have seen that error message before but don't know why it suddenly pops up in High Sierra when it has not been an issue before.

Take a look at some of your video and audio clips in the Quicktime Inspector. Open the clip in Quicktime and click on Window/Show Movie Inspector. The codecs will be listed. See if either the video or audio clips contain lpcm.

Meanwhile try restarting your computer and opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys, and then selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears. Sometimes that cures glitches.

If that doesn't cure it, try opening iMovie in a new library. Do this by holding down the Option key while opening iMovie and then selecting a different library, or creating a new library, for iMovie to open in.

You can also try opening iMovie in a new user account, such as the Guest account on your Mac.

There was a thread on this a couple of weeks ago and you can try searching for it. I just can't recall what resolution we came to there. I may be that one of the above procedures solved it.

-- Rich

Another thing you can try is exporting using the Best (ProRes) option under quality. That worked for one forum user that was having an lpcm error message. Best (ProRes) exports a .mov file, whereas all of the other iMovie export options export a Mp4 file.

-- Rich

This is a pesky issue, for sure. It seems that there is no one cure -- so nothing to do but try different stuff. At least you are able to export in pro res. As for the difficulty in sharing the large pro res files, you could use Handbrake to reconvert them back to Mp4, thereby reducing the high bitrate that is making the pro res files so large. It's a pain, I know.

The codecs seem fine, although Mp3 sometimes can be problematic. Since you have been able export these same clips before I don't think that Mp3 is the issue. You might try taking one of the clips before importing it into iMovie, and using the free download Handbrake to reconvert it into the same Mp4 codec. For some reason that sometimes resets the codec and makes it work in iMovie. See if that will export successfully.

Another thing you can try, particularly since you have recently updated your operating system, is to repair permissions using the Disc Utility app found in your Mac's Utilities folder. Doing that has cured crashing problems, and so I am wondering if it might cure an export problem. Might as well try it since it is easy to do.

The only other things I can think of that we haven't tried are 1) starting up in safe mode, and then closing and restarting in normal mode, and 2) using the diagnostics program on your Mac to rule out hardware issues.

From your post and others, I am getting the feeling that this issue is something that Apple might need to correct with an update. However, let's not give up yet.

-- Rich