OK, many of us loaded iMovie 6, How do we get out of this mess?

Question

Sorry, this is long. I have been working on this problem for about three weeks and reading all of the posting on this forum. Like many people on this board I THOUGHT I was upgrading to iMovie 6. WHAT A DISASTER !!! I have posted several questions to this discussion board about the individual problems that I have ran into. I have read about all the problems that others are having and talked to Apple tech support many times.
THE FIRST PROBLEM that I ran into was that since I run three monitors I need two video cards. I have a Dual 2 GHz PowerMac G5 with a ATI Radeon 9600 Pro in the AGP slot . This video card runs two of my monitors. I also have a ATI Radeon VGA video card in a PCI slot, it runs my third monitor. It turns out that the second video card is not Quartz Extreme supported. I called Apple tech support and a specialist told me to buy another Radeon 9600 Pro. I called MacMall to order the video card and their tech guy said yes that video card will fix you up.
I got the video card and found out that the G5 only had one AGP slot, I guess i should have known that. I called MacMall and after an hour or so on the phone they finally gave me an "RMA" so I could return the board. I call a second time Apple back and got another specialist, you never get the same one. He assures me that he knows what he is talking about and that I should get a Radeon 9200, that it is Quartz Extreme compatible and fits in a PCI slot. I call MacMall and talk to tech support they tell me they have the video card and it will work for me. I get the video card, install it and it is not Quartz Extreme compatible.
I call Apple, get a specialist and he tells me that Apple does not know what video cards will work. That is the responsibility of the video card manufactures to test which video cards will work in which machines. This time I am referred to an Apple web page, http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=303683 , that recommends a nVIDIA GeForce2 MX video card. I have done a lot of research on the nVIDIA web site, talked to them on the phone and so far no luck at finding out which video card might work. I also called Radeon and was told that they do not make a video card that is Quartz Extreme compatible for a PCI slot.
I call MacMall and really get a run-a-round about sending the video card back to them. That was Thursday and so far I do not have an RMA to send the video card back to MacMall. I reinstalled the old video card, and of course have the same problem. However someone on this discussion suggested that I unplug the third monitor from the second video card, I did and now "Ken Burns and the other effects work. Of course I am operating with one of my monitors. I can deal with the video card incompatibility until I find a new video board. I know I am spoiled. You can see my system at: http://www.waskomtexas.com/spaceship/visit.html .
THE SECOND PROBLEM that I along with several other people on this discussion board is the "STUTTERING" of the audio. I have been working on a family history DVD project for several months. I may have started with iMovie 4, I am not sure. I have opened some of the finished movies, that I know were done in iMovie 5 and they stutter, are they corrupted by iMovie 6?
I did find that if I would drag "com.apple.iMovie.plist" out of the library to the desktop the stuttering would stop for a while, but I need to test this some more.
In summary I am shut down until I can find a way to overcome the stuttering problem. I have read how to go back to iMovie 5, sounds like a lot of trouble. Wonder if the movies that I have completed in iMovie 6 will open in iMovie 5? I should have known better than to install new software until I had read this forum. Has anyone heard anything about Apple correcting the stuttering problem? Any suggestions as to how to deal with the stuttering problem?

Answer 1

I really thank the people on this forum for the help and suggestions.
I opened a new movie and named it Childhood IV. I copied and pasted all of the pictures into the new movie form the original movie Childhood. Next I copied the music from the original to the new movie in the lower sound bar and saved the movie. The sound works fine no stutters. I reopen the new movie, it still plays with no stutters. I copy and paste 24 narration clips into the top sound bar. I saved the new movie and closed the movie and quit iMovie.
I reopened iMovie and childhood IV, it runs just fine. I copied 13 more clips and pasted them into the new movie and no stutters. I have several other programs running in the background, Safari, Mail, iTunes, and Address Book. I restarted my computer, opened the movie and no stutters. I also opened Mail. I opened the original movie "Childhood", it still stutters. The new one still runs with no stutters. I copied 12 more clips, I am getting a slight bit of stutter. I save it as Childhood V, I want to see if IV will reopen and run with out stuttering.
I restarted the computer and opened "Childhood V" and it has a slight stutter. I closed V and opened IV. It still sounds file.? I reopened V and added 10 more clips, I could not tell much difference, but it seemed a little worse. I closed V and reopened IV. I copied the same 13 clips into IV as I had done before to see if the problem would repeat it's self. I ran it with out saving it and no stutter. I closed iMovie. Reopened iMovie and "Childhood VI", no stutter. I copied 10 more clips into Movie VI and no stutter. I saved movie VI.
I restarted the machine and opened movie VI and it has a slight stutter. My conclusions are:
1. is that it is hard to repeat a problem and make it work the same way twice.
2. I believe that the file is good, but fore some reason it will not play back without the stutter. However, This makes it impossible to continue working on a movie, because once it starts stuttering I can not add any more narration.
3. I believe that there is something wrong with the software and hope that Apple will fix it soon. Lots of times software companies take the cake out of the oven before it is finished baking. They let us do the R&D.
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can trouble shoot this more?