IMovie HD keeps crashing on opening project (previous imovie

Question

Hi. I have a project I put a TON of time into, using iMovie 3.03. Then I put it on hold because I knew I'd be upgrading to iMovie HD. Well, low and behold, it isn't working. I open the project and it asks to upgrade it, which will make it 'unreadable' by previous imovie versions, and then it starts loading... then crashes. Every time. Also, I booted up iMovie 3.03 from an older disk, and it opens the project fine. Any ideas?

Answer 1

It sounds like you suggest using 5 for a movie started in 4, but backtrack if you have problems, is that right? Do I need to keep the old version of the movie as a separate name, too, in order to do that?
I don't necessarily recommend using iMovie 5 to finish projects started in iMovie 4, but it usually works. You can certainly try it. Everything will probably work fine. But ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS make a backup of the iMovie 4 project first so you can finish it in iMovie 4 if you need to. Back up the entire project folder, not just the project file.
It's also good to do a Save As of the converted project after converting it to iMovie 5. That converts it from the hybrid iMovie 4/iMovie 5 folder structure to a true iMovie 5 project. That eliminates project features that can confuse users.
but am a little apprehensive since all my searches turned up people complaining, but I suppose that's who posts for the most part.
The number of complaints about iMovie HD is a fraction of what it was for earlier versions of iMovie. Keeping iMovie 4 around will help deal with any problems that occur.
Karl