I am being plagued by that infamous "heap zone" error, can someone perform some magic and fix this for me?

Question

Last night I tried to save an iMovie project that was a little over 5 minutes long, minimal transistions, moderate effects, minimal text, and some pictures and music. I have been attempting to export it at 1080p to a folder on my HD but I keep getting the heap zone error. What I don't get is a week ago I was able to export a very similar project about 4 and half minutes with no problem.
The basic specs of my Macbook Air (mid 2011 model, 11-inch running OS X 10.7) are: 120GB solid state hard drive, 4 GB of RAM, and a 1.6 GHz Intel core i5 processor. I currently have available around 13GB of storage left on the main drive, and I have an external connected (paired with Time Machine). Now, I have been researching this problem all last night and all this morning and several of the known "solutions" have not worked for me. Looking in my Activity Monitor it seems whenever I try to export this project through iMovie, the "Free" RAM just progressively drops until it hits about 450MB of RAM and then I get the heap zone error message. and while I have been able to free up about 2.5Gb of RAM prior to exporting the project, it still manages to eat up all but 400-500Mb and then gives me the error. I'm pretty lost at what to do. Here's what I've tried so far:
- First instinct, restarted the computer
- Closed out most of my usually running programs
- Used the "Purge" command in terminal to free up 'Inactive' RAM (though it only free'd up a little bit, it always stops at 400Mb)
- Downlaoded a Cache Cleaner and did a 'medium' cleaning of local and system cache
- Turned off Time Machine
- Tried saving to my external drive instead of the main one (so obviously it's not a storage issue)
- Eliminated the use of special characters from the title
- Closed all processes in the Activity Monitor that weren't vital or being run by the system
None of those worked and I consistently got the heap zone error at the same point, about 1/10 of the way through in 'Preparing Project' Is there any other solutions to this problem? Preferrably ones that don't involve, deleting significant files or items from my drive, re-installing the OS, or any other drastic system changes because afterall my system hasn't drastically changed in the past week that iMovie WAS working so this has to be a simple fix.
I'm really just getting annoyed and fed up with this so PLEASE someone have the right answer.

Answer 1

Hi
This is a complex Error - so this is the notes I've got - so far
Error -108 memFullErr  Ran out of memory [not enough room in heap zone]
Turn off - TimeMachine usually works - re-try.
(the Application down in the Dock - not the Device)
But this can mean many thing's - My first thought is
• Free Space on Start-Up hard disk. How much ? (other disks do not count)
AppleMan1958
Are your event clips in h.264? If so, you can solve this by Right clicking on your Event Name and choose "Optimize Media". You can choose Full for 1080P or Large for 960P according to your preference.
After you have optimized your Event, you should be able to Share with no problem.
Lennart Thelander
-108 mean you are running out of (free) RAM.
Try restarting the computer just prior to sharing. That frees up RAM.
from mynameisearl
Final Entry
Ok - after much cutting, trial and error and days of work I have never really established a root cause for the -108 error. Nothing I did resolved the issue to the orginal project.
The only work around I have found is to split the Original Project into two.
What I found was that anything around the 60 mins mark and above just failed to render in HD and showed the -108 error.
What worked for me was creating two project files - one around 57mins long - the other a part 2 - around 17 mins long. All using exactly the same source clips, photo's, music and transitions as the orginal.
This now works. I guess having it split in two makes it a little easier to work with as I wont have to keep rendering the first part which does not change but really wish Apple would throw some light on this.
Anyway - I hope all of the above at least proves useful for others.
Good Luck
Yours Bengt W