IMovie 08 version 7.1 not responding - spinning rainbow

Question

Hello,
It seems like there are a lot of people reporting that after the update to iMovie 7.1 - they can't use iMovie with their pre-existing data (pictures/movies/projects/preferences).
Here are some steps to see if you have the same problem that I had, some steps to isolate the issue, and one thing that worked for me to get iMovie 7.1 working again (by deleting my old projects and preferences)
Please read over one other article before attempting to move your preferences - it covers the basics of isolating software issues - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25398 - you'll also want to make notes on paper when you start moving folders in case it doesn't work and you want to undo the changes you make.
1) Do you have the problem?
If activity monitor and/or force quit window show that iMovie is drawn in red and not responding for more than 5 minutes. If you normal quit the program (command Q) - iMovie will exit promptly - there should not be a need to force quit the application.
2) Isolate the issue.
Your mac could have other problems and iMovie might not be the issue. I would make a new account in the account preference pane, log out of your accout and log in to the new account. Fire up iMovie - if it hangs there too with no prior preferences, no old events, no movies in the iPhoto library - you can be pretty sure there's something else going wrong. It might be worth re-installing the updates or reloading your OS - but the workaround I will propose below won't likely help you find or fix your problem.
3) Workaround
Set aside your old preferences and movies to get iMovie 7.1 working again. Then you should be able to re-import the raw video again and do some work with your current version of software (since there is no uninstall for this update). This won't actually fix your data or the iMovie program - you'll have to wait for another article or tool or update if you can't leave behind your old data... If you have lots of time, you might try things one by one to figure out what exactly was wrong - but I didn't have the time or inclination to debug this further - so I'll document what I've done in case it helps someone else...
a) Quit iMovie (heck - quit all apps you can since I will propose moving the caches aside)
b) Make a folder on your desktop called "old" or whatever you please and move these things there:
Your iMovie preferences stored in ~/Library/Preferences
Your iMovie data folders (Projects, Events, etc...) stored in ~/Movies
Your Caches folder stored in ~Library
c) Log out of your account (so any programs using old Caches are forced to make new Cache files)
d) Log back in to your account. If you are not paranoid - fire up iMovie - it should start fine. At that point you can pick to leave the old projects behind and start again - or quit iMovie and move the old folders back (trash Caches - move the other items back to where they were before overwriting the "new" Preferences and folders...
e) If you are paranoid or firing up iMovie still didn't work - download and reinstall iLifeSupport81.dmg and iMovie_710.dmg to be sure you have the latest versions installed correctly.
Good luck,
Mike
p.s. I don't think anyone that has this problem could have fixed their data to prevent this "lock up" - and since it's fairly widely reported - I'm hoping a new update might be able to let iMovie 7.1 handle the same data that iMovie 7.0 was using just fine before the update. For those that program - here is a sample of my iMovie when it locked up...
<pre>2007-09-27 21:33:37.299 sample[405\] threadreadstack: stack appears to be corrupt
or in inconsistent state. Truncating stack.
2007-09-27 21:33:37.309 sample[405\] threadreadstack: stack appears to be corrupt
or in inconsistent state. Truncating stack.
2007-09-27 21:33:37.309 sample[405\] threadreadstack: stack appears to be corrupt
or in inconsistent state. Truncating stack.
</pre>
(the stack was really corrupt - this line was printed 598 times while the sample program was trying to see what iMovie was up to when the beach ball was spinning - it's not normal for a properly running program to have a corrupt stack so I'm not surprised that iMovie could never regain it's wits once it went off the deep end so to speak while looking over the files it was preparing to work with)
Here's the good part of the sample that seems to show the program in the process of building up the list of media it needs to work with (which needs to happen when the program starts and before we get to use the program)
<pre>299 -[ILMediaGroupsTreeController reloadAllGroups\]
299 -[ILMediaGroupsTreeController filteredGroupHeirarchy:\]
299 -[ILMediaBrowserView _shouldDisplayMediaGroup:\]
299 -[ILMediaGroup filteredAllMediaObjectsCount\]
299 -[ILMediaGroup allMediaObjects\]
299 -[ILMediaGroup allMediaObjects_SearchedGroups:\]
261 -[NSArray containsObject:\]
261 _NSArrayIndexOfObject
175 _ArrayIndexOfObject
97 objc_msgSend
</pre>
Again - I don't have source code for iMovie - so I may be way off on my guess - but it seems like the program version 7.0 wrote or handled data in a way that makes 7.1 mighty unhappy.

Answer 1

Mike,
I also had a bunch of bugs appear when I got the automatic update.
I went and offloaded this file
http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/imovie71.html
And the bugs were not there after I reinstalled.
Hope that helps,
Cheers,
I'm now tryign to figure out the volume controls.....