Video in iMovie is too dark. Movie's produced from iMovie have correct brightness.

Hmmmm.

As a temporary measure, you can brighten the clips in your project by selecting them individually or as a batch and using the brightness adjustment slider found when you click on the color palette icon in the tool bar at the upper right of your screen.

Try opening the clip in Quicktime Player and then saving it to your desktop. That will give you a .mov

file. Drag that file into iMovie and see if the brightness displays properly.

I am unclear as to what you mean when you say "movies in iMovie theater . . . are being displayed much too dark". What is puzzling me is that you appear to be able to share out a project to your desktop and have it play fine, but movies shared to Theater are dark? Do the movies in Theater display darkly when you play them by clicking on the project icon in the Theater library screen? When you drag a movie from the Theater screen to your desktop, does it play in QT Player O.K? Or are you referring only to the brightness of the Theater icons themselves? When you share a movie simultaneously to a File on your desktop and to Theater, do they both display O.K. when played?

At this point I would try a re-download of iMovie. If you are able to share out your projects and have them play O.K, then something is not functioning correctly with the display in iMovie, and perhaps a re-download will cure that.

-- Rich

Hi, Clint,

Possibly you have a corrupt preference, that could have occurred because of your computer being serviced.

Try opening iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys, and then selecting to delete preferences in the box that appears. Sometimes that resolves odd glitches.

-- Rich

I am having the same problem! I just restored a backup from time machine, which was on an external hard drive and now all videos are showing dark in the editing area. I also just updated imovie so I am unsure if the update is the problem or the restore? I have no idea what to do and need help with this!

Fixed the issue! You just need to reinstall the operating system. restart your computer and hold down command + R. then choose to reinstall Mac OS. Should work fine after that!