Imovie transitions won't

December 24, 2006 10:59 PM

I was cranking out the family christmas email, complete with links to crappy home movies, and I can't get my last little clip made in Imovie. Specifically, Imovie won't let me insert transitions. Regardless of the length of the clips I'm transitioning, the "add" button is all greyed out. Oh, and Merry Christmas!
posted by craniac to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Imovie HD 6.03 (272)
posted by craniac at 11:00 PM on December 24, 2006

Additional oddness: I was able to add transitions early today, but now I can't. Is it the audio track?
posted by craniac at 11:03 PM on December 24, 2006

There's not info to go on but sometimes imovie gets a little wonky if you're working on your main HDD and it runs out of virtual memory. Try emptying the trash (make sure there's nothing you need) and retsrta to flush out the RAm, virtual memory. launch nothing else but imovie - that might do it but if not, next simplest is a cheat. EXPORT it all as a DV file. Make sure it's a FULL DV file and not a compressed QT file - select EXPERT setting and click on OPTIONS. This way you basically export everything you'e done as a full fledged DV file with NO compression. After it's exported. Throw and empty your "project" timeline (if you're leery and you have the space - drag everything you've done so far into the clips panels). Close iMovie. Restart the machine to start over cleanly. Now IMPORT or drag your DV file back into the iMovie timeline. Try again - splitting the last bit ... if you're intention is to output to iDVD, I also recommend you first output it as a IMAGE file - then mount it and copy, hope that helps.
posted by jbelkin at 12:23 AM on December 25, 2006

Also try adding the transition by dragging it from the list of transitions directly to the timeline.
posted by toddshot at 1:59 AM on December 25, 2006

With my hard drive running a little low, I bet jbelkin nailed it. Thank you!
posted by craniac at 9:49 AM on December 25, 2006