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Troll · Jul 23, 2002, 04:16 AM

I just finished editing a movie of my trip to South Africa using iMovie for OSX. The movie was complete with footage of a Duiker (antelope) taken from about 2m away and some awesome once in a lifetime footage. Showed the finished movie to some friends and then yesterday decided to back it up to tape.

On launch iMovie said that the project file was corrupt. It then said it had found stray clips. It then said it was loading 110 clips onto the shelf. In the background, I can see the timeline with the final movie on it, but all of the clips are black. Anyway, it starts loading the clips onto the shelf and then unexpectedly quits. I've tried a few times and it quits each time. Also tried deleting the initial stray clips and same result.

I rebooted into OS9 and iMovie does the same thing, except when it crashes, it freezes the whole system.

I don't have a backup of this footage.

Is there any way:

1) I can fix the project file so I don't lose all of my hard editing work?
2) I can use the clips that are on the hard drive at least to start again from scratch?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

BTW - I cannot believe that Apple hasn't updated iMovie for OSX. It is so buggy. I have had it crash a number of times. Given the time you spend on a movie and the frustration that is aimed Apple's way when it crashes, you'd think Apple would forget about updating iTunes and fix iMovie first. I'm not going to throw my iMac around if I lose an MP3 I just downloaded but my movies!!!!!!

[ 07-23-2002, 10:42 AM: Message edited by: Troll ]

Troll · Jul 23, 2002, 09:44 AM

Trying to think what I might have done that prompted this and I was wondering whether it isn't Quicktime 6???

Anyone know if there are problems with iMovie and Quicktime 6.

ism · Jul 23, 2002, 01:04 PM

The Quicktime 6 PB didn't work with imovie (in OS 9) anyway. I didn't realise this (hmmm, obviously should read release notes) and had quite a scare. So went back to Quicktime 5 and everything was fine. Now Quicktime 6 has been officially released everything is hunkydory again.

Are you still using the Beta of quicktime 6? If not I would try going back to quicktime 5 and see if that solves your problems.

Troll · Jul 23, 2002, 03:52 PM

After many tense hours, I've kind of sorted it out.

First thing to note is that I had the official release of Quicktime 6 installed NOT the Public Beta. When I reverted to Quicktime 5, iMovie would still say the project file was corrupt, but it would get past this error and would display the project with no data in the timeline, i.e. with Quicktime 5 I could back to where I had been before I started editing. This was a relief, but I wanted to get the project back.

I found <a href="http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@105.YbcoaTYlcLW.7@.ef99936.2cd6c9fa/0" target="_blank">this discussion</a> on the Apple Discussion boards. Opened a copy of my project file with BBEdit and found three occurrences of clips with negative "in" and "out" values that seemed to be the wrong way round i.e. in should be out. I made them positive, switched the values, saved the file and replaced the old corrupt project file. When I launched the new file, iMovie started up no problem WITH MY PROJECT IN ONE PIECE!

There were some problems with the clips that had been corrupted. They didn't start or stop in the right places. I tried a few more time to fix the problem through manipulating the numbers in BBEdit but then gave it up and decided to just edit those clips out.

Anyway, moral of the story is:

1) There appears to be a problem with Quicktime 6 and iMovie.

2) Backup your project file!

OwlBoy · Jul 23, 2002, 08:55 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Troll:
After many tense hours, I've kind of sorted it out.

First thing to note is that I had the official release of Quicktime 6 installed NOT the Public Beta. When I reverted to Quicktime 5, iMovie would still say the project file was corrupt, but it would get past this error and would display the project with no data in the timeline, i.e. with Quicktime 5 I could back to where I had been before I started editing. This was a relief, but I wanted to get the project back.

I found <a href="http://discussions.info.apple.com/webx?14@105.YbcoaTYlcLW.7@.ef99936.2cd6c9fa/0" target="_blank">this discussion</a> on the Apple Discussion boards. Opened a copy of my project file with BBEdit and found three occurrences of clips with negative "in" and "out" values that seemed to be the wrong way round i.e. in should be out. I made them positive, switched the values, saved the file and replaced the old corrupt project file. When I launched the new file, iMovie started up no problem WITH MY PROJECT IN ONE PIECE!

There were some problems with the clips that had been corrupted. They didn't start or stop in the right places. I tried a few more time to fix the problem through manipulating the numbers in BBEdit but then gave it up and decided to just edit those clips out.

Anyway, moral of the story is:

1) There appears to be a problem with Quicktime 6 and iMovie.

2) Backup your project file!<hr /></blockquote>Yup thats what I was gonna tell you, you prolly had clip with a 0:00:00 or negative time marked for them.

We hd this problem at my school last year one and it took me for ever to figure it out... nice to see you already have it fixed though

-Owl