IMovie unexpectedly quits - Driving me crazy, please help???

Question

Hi All
I am in desperate need of help.
I am currently trying to both Publish and or Export a project using iMovie 09. The project runs for 2 and half hours and contains various home movies I have recorded over the year. The actual footage has been recorded on both my Sony AVCHD camera and also my iphone 4 (both of which I have been able to publish projects with previously). The project is nothing fancy, it contains the usual Titles, Transitions and chapters. Every time I attempt to either publish or export the project I receive an error message advising “iMovie has unexpectedly quit“. I have tried to publish in all sizes (Tiny, Mobile, Medium, Large & HD) all with no success and have also tried exporting using imovie and quicktime numerous times with varying settings. All combinations continue to result in the same error message. On a side note I have created a smaller “Test Project” of which only runs for one minute, this again uses footage from both cameras and features the same Titles, Transitions and chapters. This file both publishes and exports without problem.
As the smaller/shorter file/clip works I have to assume the problem relates to the size of my project, this then strikes me as being odd as I have other projects running upto 2hrs 53Min of which have been published in HD previously. I am using a 2.8 Ghz intel core 2 Duo processor with 4 GB Ram.
When I proceed to send an error report to apple the start of the report reads as follows:
Process: iMovie [19752]
Path: /Applications/iMovie.app/Contents/MacOS/iMovie
Identifier: com.apple.iMovie8
Version: 8.0.6 (821)
Build Info: iMovieApp-8210000~16
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [78]
Interval Since Last Report: 260128 sec
Crashes Since Last Report: 4
Per-App Interval Since Last Report: 84581 sec
Per-App Crashes Since Last Report: 4
Date/Time: 2011-01-12 21:11:44.715 +1100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)
Report Version: 6
Anonymous UUID: ED0ECE17-A82C-4F3E-A0CB-5522C53ED1A7
Exception Type: EXCBADACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERNINVALIDADDRESS at 0x0000000042638000
Crashed Thread: 16
Does anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be ? its driving me nuts !!!!
Regards
Dylan

Answer 1

Hi
Does anyone have any ideas on what the problem could be ? its driving me nuts !!!!
No - but may be You find some ideas here.
*Not knowing the origin to Your problem - General approach when in trouble is as follows.*
• Free space on internal (start-up) hard disk if it is less than 10Gb should rather have 25Gb
• Delete iMovie pref file
iMovie pref file resides.
Mac Hard Disk (start-up HD)/Users/"Your account"/Library/Preferences
and is named. (one or more of these)
com.apple.iMovie.plist
com.apple.iMovie3.plist
com.apple.iMovie7.plist
com.apple.iMovie8.plist
and find
com.apple.iApps.plist
While iMovie is NOT RUNNING - move this/these file/s out on to desk-top.
Now restart iMovie.
• Hard disk is untidy. Repair Permissions, Repair Hard disk (Apple’s Disk Utilities application)
• Garageband-fix. Start it, Play a note and Close it. Re-try (Corrects an audio problem that hinders iMovie)
• Screen must be set to Million-colors
• Turn off Mac and disconnect Mains/Power for 20-30 minutes - will at least re-set FW-port
• Third party plug-ins that doesn't work OK (not relevant for iMovie’08 or 09)
• Problems in iPhoto Library can affect iMovie to crash on start-up. Re-build this first then try to re-start iMovie.
This You do by
_ close iPhoto
_ on start up of iPhoto - Keep {cmd and alt-keys down}
_ now select all five options presented
_ WAIT a long long time
• iMovie updated ?
• QuickTime updated ?
• Mac OS version ?
• Program miss-match. iMovie 4 - will not work under Leopard
• Program miss-match. iMovie 5.0.2, up to Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK
• Program miss-match. iMovie 6.0.3 or 6.0.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.4.1 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)
• Program miss-match. iMovie’08 v. 7.1.4, Mac OS X.4.11 AND QuickTime 7.5.5 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)
• Program miss-match. iMovie’09 v. 8.0.6, Mac OS X.5.8 AND QuickTime 7.6.4 - is OK (will work under Leopard and Snow-Leopard)
From LKN 1935. (in this case = iMovie HD (5), I tried it all, but nothing worked.
Your answer (above) has been helpfull insofar as all the different trials led to the conclusion that
there was something wrong with my iMovie software. I therefore threw everything away and reinstalled
iMovie from the HD. After that the exportation of DV videos (there has not been any problem with HDV videos)
to my Sony camcorders worked properly as it did before.
Lennart Thelander
I run "Cache Out X", clear out all caches and restarts the Mac.
Yours Bengt W