iMovie Issues
The best defense against experiencing technical issues with iMovie is keeping your software updated with the latest patches and builds; this includes regularly updating peripheral software that iMovie may utilize, such as QuickTime and iPhoto. Even with current updates in place, however, you may experience one of several known issues with iMovie.
Other People Are Reading
-
Connectivity
-
When you attempt to access a video camera or its contents with iMovie, you may experience connectivity problems. According to Apple support, if iMovie suddenly stops importing or exporting, becomes unresponsive, or displays a message indicating that it can't communicate with the camera, you are probably experiencing a connectivity issue. Depending on your camcorder model, there may be any number of factors affecting connectivity and any number of solutions. However, some common solutions include using a FireWire connection instead of USB, disconnecting and reconnecting the FireWire cord, restarting the camera, restarting iMovie, restarting the computer, disabling the “FileVault” feature in OS X’s “Security Preferences,” and switching your camera to “DV,” “VCR” or “VTR” mode. Consult the owner’s manual for your camcorder to make sure you have it set up to properly connect and communicate with your computer.
Compatibility
-
IMovie is compatible with some of the most common video codecs used in camcorders, such as H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DV and AIC. However, iMovie is also incompatible with many formats, including the widely used WMV and AVI formats. If you attempt to import a video to iMovie, only to receive an “Incompatible Video Format” message, you need to first convert the video to a compatible format, using either Apple’s QuickTime Pro or a third-party video converter program.
-
iLife Application Locations/Names
-
The Mac OS X version of iMovie is typically included as part of a larger suite of multimedia applications; it's called iLife. If you are using iMovie via iLife, do not change the names or locations of any of these apps, as doing so will prevent them from communicating with each other. For instance, if either iMovie or iDVD has been moved or renamed, it prevents you from using the iMovie “Share with iDVD” feature. Tampering with the application names and locations may also prevent you from properly updating and upgrading iLife software.
Digital Cinema Mode
-
Some Panasonic and Canon digital camcorder models include a feature called “digital cinema mode,” which essentially makes your digital recording look a little more like a film recording. Videos recorded in digital cinema mode have a tendency to come out jittery once imported into iMovie ’09, and there is really no way to fix this problem. If you’re using the ‘09 version of iMovie, your only option is to simply not record your videos in digital cinema mode.
Widescreen Letterboxing
-
If you record a video in widescreen (16:9) mode on your camcorder, iMovie’s editing feature has a tendency to add additional letterboxes to it, as if you were converting a video in standard 4:3 aspect ratio to widescreen. After you import a video that was captured in a 16:9 aspect ratio, you must leave iMovie in “Camera” mode and save the project. Then quit out of iMovie and turn off your camera. Once you restart iMovie and open the saved project, the program will omit the faulty letterboxes.
-
References
Resources
- Photo Credit BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images
