iMovie glitch - why won't the video play?

March 18, 2008 7:28 PM

I am trying to make a short video clip using iMovie '08. When I play it, it looks great. When I export it, it acts completely differently.

The intended result contains an opening still photo, with a title overlay, then a 37s movie clip which has some titles overlaid at various points and then another still photo at the end with another title overlay. There is a music track over the whole video.

I thought I had it just liked I wanted it. When I play it within iMovie (clicking the spacebar or using the play buttons - in window and full screen) it looks like I expect and want. However, when I export the movie it doesn't. And the same thing problem is evident when I position the red line at the start of the movie and use my right arrow to advance through the frames:

The photo at the beginning persists throughout the movie with all the various title overlays on top of it. It is just like the video clip wasn't there and the initial photo was set to display through the whole length of the video instead of the 2s it is set for. Or as if the photo was "on top of" the video clip. When I change the display to show it in 1/2s frames it all looks exactly as I'd expect. When I am moving the red line using my arrow when it gets over the video clip the clip moves as it should but it doesn't play in the main display window.

I have tried to delete the opening photo, but then the end photo acts in the same way. Short of deleting the whole thing and starting over I'm at a loss. I've tried Googling, but I don't really know good terms to describe it. I am reading through the Apple support forums but thought I'd post this at the same time since the first 8 pages haven't turned anything up.

This is my first iMovie and until now it has been pretty easy to figure out. If it helps to motivate you to answer the video is of my cat. And he's wearing a sweater.

posted by marylynn to technology (4 comments total)

I'm not sure I understand your specific problem, but I spent a couple of weeks a few months ago with my new macbook trying to figure out a way to create a movie in iMovie that included both individual clips AND a "play all" options AND had an audio track, and concluded that it's impossible. There are various forums somewhere on apple.com where you can try asking for help, as I did, but my experience is that iMovie is pretty useless.
posted by thomas144 at 9:11 AM on March 19, 2008

I don't have iMovie8 yet, so I can't help you with it.
But you can download the previous version, iMovieHD, for free, and I know you can do what you describe with it. It's FAR from useless.

Another option would be to use a screen-capture video utility to record your iMovie playback when it's doing what it should. I'd choose iShowU since it's cheap and up to date.
posted by dpcoffin at 10:02 AM on March 19, 2008

Thanks for your answers. I did download the old iMovieHD last night and started playing with it. It's unfortunately not as sophisticated as iMovie '08 which means some of the neat overlay graphics I was able to do so easily in the new version aren't possible. What I'm trying to do isn't really so hard (open title, video clip, end title) so I don't think it's that iMovie isn't capable, but just that something is either wrong with my video clip or there's some setting there I haven't activated to make it work. One thing that I have to look at further is that the video clip I have (taken by my digital camera and initially imported into iPhoto) looks much cleaner and opens in a native format in HD but not in '08 (I had to convert it to .avi using QT for '08 to recognize it).

The suggestion about screen-capture is an interesting one. I might have to give that a go.
posted by marylynn at 1:46 PM on March 19, 2008

I ended up using iShowU to capture the movie as dpcoffin suggested. I couldn't get the frame rate to match up but, frankly, even the crazy cat lady in me had had enough by that point. The result is here.
posted by marylynn at 8:38 PM on March 24, 2008