Static during transitions

Question

I am experiencing static during transitions and have read a lot of posts that complain about similar issues. I have also read that cross-dissolves are particularly prone to this problem, and that is my typical transition of choice. (I would assume that the cross-dissolve is one of the most common transition effects for most people.)
As others have reported, sometimes extracting the audio (as Apple suggests) seems to work, and sometimes it does not. In addition, having a lot of extracted audio really slows down the performance of iMovie on my older Mac and leads to some strange behavior that makes me think my project will get irreversibly corrupted.
I found it strange, though, that the static happened during some transitions, and not others. Then, I noticed that I was getting sustained static for the entire length of certain clips to which I had applied an effect. Again, only some of the clips to which I had applied the effect had the static, and not all of them.
Then, I think I figured out why only some transitions and clips had the problem. It seems that when I initiated a SINGLE transition (or an effect on a SINGLE clip), and I allowed that SINGLE transition (or effect) to finish rendering before initiating another, there was no static. However, if I initiated cross-dissolve transitions on MULTIPLE clips (or effects on MULTIPLE clips) such that they rendered SIMULTANEOUSLY, then I was far more likely to get static.
I found it very convenient to simultaneously apply cross-dissolves across many clips in my projects, and it takes a lot more user interaction to apply them separately, but it is worth it in the long run to avoid having to extract and/or mute audio at multiple transitions, and then suffer the resulting performance hit to iMovie.
Perhaps this is more of an issue when you have an older (slower) Mac like mine, or perhaps I am crazy, and it was just a coincidence that when I applied SINGLE transitions (or effects) that I did not get static. Perhaps some of you who have had this problem can try this workaround to see if it works and reply to this message. (Note that there may be different issues to which this does not apply. For example, I have seen reports of a single pop at transitions from still frames. I'm not sure whether that is the same problem.)
I seem to recall posting a similar message on the iMovie forum quite awhile ago, but it has long since been deleted. Stupidly, I forgot my own workaround and just had a similar problem with a new project, and I had to rediscover the workaround with an eerie feeling of deja vu.
It is amazing to me that something this important and basic to the functionality of iMovie has not been fixed over the multiple years since iMovie 3. If others can confirm this workaround, perhaps Apple can get a better idea of why it is happening.

Answer 1

Hello: I am having the same problem with a movie, rendered transition to a still image. Nothing fancy, and yet the entire transition is filled with static. I have tried two different transitions to no avail. The static is also in the exported Quicktime movie. so it is not something that shows up in the iMovie preview.