Just got a new iMac and iMovie is giving me beachball lag

Where are you storing your video?. Check how much space you got on your hard drive as video files take up a load of space. I would be inclined to store all my video files on an external hard drive.

optimusp517 said:

Well I have a 1TB fusion drive. All my footage is on iphoto right now and I just make a copy of it when I transfer to imovie. shouldn't lag at all since it's a new computer and everything.

Also the beach ball shows up for 5 seconds and it goes away. Not sure why.

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Computer specs
What you used to record the footage on
What codec/container the footage is now
how long is the footage (20 second clip, 1 hour long clip)

As a video editor my self...

Beach balls will always be there with video.

The thing is that the video software has to pull an stream of data continually and that causes problems with the buffers.

When you load a software, those are small packages of data with no timing.

One thing you can do is to check what sort of codec you are using when editing.

For example H264 is a codec for delivery, not for editing because is compressed into packages. Many times video cameras uses that sort of codec to save space.

For video editing you need something like Apple Pro Res HQ, it separates the packages into individual frames. That was the video editing software do not need to decompress on the fly when you are editing.

Those may be the reason of your beach ball, specially if you use HD.

daybreak said:

Where are you storing your video?. Check how much space you got on your hard drive as video files take up a load of space.

Click to expand...

rei101 said:

One thing you can do is to check what sort of codec you are using when editing.

For example H264 is a codec for delivery, not for editing because is compressed into packages. .... For video editing you need something like Apple Pro Res HQ, it separates the packages into individual frames. That way the video editing software do not need to decompress on the fly when you are editing.

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Hi @optimusp517,

You didn't acknowledge the CODEC advice from @rei101.
Sounds like you should try what he suggested.

Also, you didn't reply back with the status of your available diskspace
after @daybreak mentioned that available diskspace is important.

It's always good netiquette to acknowledge and thank
those who take time out of their day to try to help you : - )

Schedule appointment with Apple Store Genius Bar. They'll diagnose it.

I can edit in Final Cut Pro X off a USB 2.0 drive on a 2.0 i7 mac mini without beachballs, so you should certainly not have a problem like this.

Not to hijack the thread (but I guess I'm going to), but I wondered if it was really the codec that was giving me troubles instead of my MBP (2.4 C2D, 8GB ram, 1 TB HDD).

I tried out the FCP demo editing 1080p video from a Vixia 300 and it was a miserable experience. This made me feel that I had the Macbook Amateur as it couldn't run a pro app. I'm sticking to 720p until I can upgrade my comp. But maybe it's a matter of having the right codec for editing?