IMovie11 hangs, freezes while generating thumbnails

Question

Often after importing MiniDV tapes using iMovie11 the progress bar for generating thumbnails gets to a certain point and then stops. It will remain this way for over a day unless I Force Quit the application.
The event directory and thumbnail directory of the imported tape do not show any recently created files after a while.
A search on the internet revealed one workaround - delete any zero-byte DV files that iMovie creates and reload iMovie.This worked for a couple of tapes but now I am stuck while importing other tapes.
I am not using Stabilization.
As of this writing, I may have narrowed the problem down to the number of DV files that iMovie creates. For some reason, with those other tapes, it creates almost 2000 such files for a simple 90-minute tape. When I delete over a 1000 of the smallest DV files iMovie will complete the generation of thumbnails.
I have not yet tested what happens if I delete over a 1000 of the largest DV files.
If I import the same tape twice, the two imports will produce a different number of DV files, the difference is in the hundreds but both data sets are still too large for iMovie11 to generate thumbnails from.
I have tried using two different camcorders for importing those other tapes without positive results.
I have a new low-end Mac Pro with the OS present as of Oct of last year (when I bought the computer), 8GB of RAM, 600MB of free disk space, and I use a Firewire adapter to convert the 400 mbps connection coming out of the camcorders to the 800 mbps connection integral to my Mac Pro.
I have tried powering down and back up to remove variables involving the OS and Firewire interface.
I have no other movie projects or events present in iMovie when I conduct my imports.
How do I get iMovie11 to stop hanging, freezing while it generates thumbnails?
Thank you.

Answer 1

Absolutely has to be a bug. This isn't a setting or configuration problem. It might even be a Snow Leopard problem. I had the same problems with A2.1.4 on SL as I do with version A3.0.1. Export hangs seem to happen on images that came from my A2 library that was imported into A3 but originally adjusted in A2. These images were imported from scanned TIFF files. If the adjustment mechanism was flawed in prior Aperture versions then Apple needs to create and distribute a utility that converts these images into something that A3 can use.
I will have to revert to A2 running on Leopard until Apple can get this fixed. If I cannot export, there is no point in running the software. On this discussion thread, we are just trying to fly by flapping our arms.