IMovie Freezes at Startup

Question

Hello...
Whenever I try to use IMovie it always crashes at startup. When the program loads, I get the rotating beachball icon and nothing happens. If I don't force quit, it will stay like that all day. Someone told me to remove the p-list file, but that did nothing. I have no problems with DVD though. I read a previous post that said you need at least 500MB free space on your hard drive or the same thing will happen, but I have over 70GB.
Can anyone help?
G5   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

Answer 1

This list was written by #1 iMovie Guru Karl Petersen. Go through it and see if anything helps.
Here's some things that can cause such problems.
• The project disk may be formatted incorrectly.
The disk the project resides on must use the "Mac OS Extended" disk format (optionally followed by "Journaled"). If it's not, iMovie can't reliably save the project—or newly-rendered clips—to disk. Many FireWire drives purchased off the shelf use a different format. When you buy a disk, always check the format.
To check the format, Control-click on the disk icon in the Finder and choose "Get Info" from the popUp menu. The disk format is shown in the window that opens.
If necessary, use Disk Utility to reformat the disk. WARNING: that erases all the files on the disk, so make backups.
• Incompatible third-party QuickTime add-ons.
Some third-party QuickTime add-ons can cause problems for iMovie 6. They should be disabled (removed) until updates to them are available.
Users have reported problems associated with any of these: 3ivx, Divx, Flip4Mac. If so, remove them—or temporarily move them to some other folder—and Restart your Mac.
They may be located in two folders: 1) Hard Disk>Library>QuickTime folder, or 2) User Name>Library>QuickTime folder.
To disable them, move them to some other folder. (You can create a folder named "QuickTime (disabled)" and move them there.)
• Incompatible third-party iMovie plug-ins.
Plug-ins that worked well in iMovie 5 may no longer work in iMovie 6. They can cause a variety of problems. They are located in your User Name/Library/iMovie folder. Remove them until updates are available.
If none of that helps, here's a couple of diagnostic tricks:
• To check for a disk problem, try moving the project to your Mac's main drive. If you can edit the project successfully there, it may be a problem with the disk. (That shouldn't concern you, at least not yet. The problem isn't necessarily serious. Use Disk Utility to verify and repair the disk.)
• To check for incompatible software, use System Preferences > Accounts to create a new user. If iMovie works correctly when you log in as that user, that suggests there's incompatible software that runs when YOU are the user. It's not running for the new user, so iMovie works as it should.
Karl
:)Sue