IMovie Crashing when importing photo with Ken Burns Effect

Question

iMovie is crashing all the time when I am trying to import a photo with Ken burns effect using media browser and hitting "apply". Is this a known problem ? If I dont apply Ken Buruns effect then it imports it fine.
I am trying to put Photo at the begining of my project ( and then put title on that photo). If I have any clip in the begining and then try importing photo with ken burn's effect then it is not crashing, but it still does not import it. I click "apply" and it does soemthing , I can see the clip in timeline for a sec and then it disappears. So either way, cant use any photos anywhere with Ken Burn's effect. Whats going on?
I have more than enough space available on my HDD and I do not think there is any conflicting QT plugins I have ( It's all default Install). This is so consistent that it seems like a Bug but can't find this exact case mentioned anywhere in discussions.
Powerbook G4 12.1" 1.5Ghz   Mac OS X (10.4.5)  

Answer 1

Welcome to the forum! And thanks for such an insightful post.
I have two guesses here:
o The Ken Burns code of iMovie has a problem with partitions
o The Ken Burns code of iMovie has a problem with access rights
I've never seen a Ken Burns problem with partitions (I've used multiple partitions for years with no problems). I suspect that's not the cause.
But I think you've hit the nail on the head that iMovie may have a problem with permissions/access rights. I don't know exactly what the problem is — or whether it's caused by iMovie or OSX — but there is behavior that suggests something isn't right.
I suspect the issue, whatever it is, causes a failure to save the rendered Ken Burns clip inside the project package. The red bar runs, but the rendered clip isn't saved to disk. My guess is OSX refuses to allow iMovie to save the file for OSX doesn't believe YOU have permission.
One would think that using the Finder to set the permissions of the project package would solve the problem, but it doesn't seem to.
There are two possible solutions:
1. Set the partition to ignore permissions. In the Finder, click on the partition and Get Info. Turn ON the checkbox "Ignore permissions on this volume";
2. Use Disk Utility to reformat (erase) the partition. Somehow that seems to fix the problem.
Here's some history which may suggest another solution: In an earlier version of iMovie a similar problem occurred, where iMovie would refuse to open a project. It had somehow decided you didn't have permission to edit the project.
The only solution was to use the Finder to create a new set of project folders — a folder and all the folders it normally contains — then Option-drag the FILES of the original project folder to the appropriate folders. (Option-dragging COPIED the files instead of moving them.) The new project folder would now open normally.
If you are adept at working with packages, you might try creating your own package (which contains all the normal folders) then Option-drag the files of the problem project to your package.
Once I saw an error -52 announcement, but it was not reproducible.
Error -52 is a "Get file position error", which (may) suggest a disk directory error. That may be a disk issue unrelated to iMovie. You might want to consider using Disk Utility to Verify/Repair that partition.
I have a separate partition for the movies and made a
link from my home account to the directory with the
movies on that partition. iMovie works correctly
except for the Ken Burns photo rendering.
I'm never sure whether creating such a link is a good idea or not, especially for the iLife apps. Some apps don't resolve the alias as they should, which creates other problems. A "Movies" alias sends iDVD a million miles beyond Jupiter, for example, where the iDVD project joins the space dust.
For iMovie projects saved on partitions and external drives, I just save them inside a "iMovie 6 Projects" folder on that drive. (Every new version of iMovie gets a new folder.) For convenience, I may create aliases to help navigate there, but do nothing else. Everything just works.
If you figure out something new, please say.
Karl