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G4 Powerbook Slowdown

foz405

foz405

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 24, 2006
70
1
Mount Hutton, Newcastle, NSW, Australia
Help please !! I'm running 10.3.9 on a 1.5ghz G4 Powerbook with 1GB DDR SDRAM, and today whilst working with iMOvie the whole show slowed to a crawl.
It is impossible to edit anything as the catherine wheel just spins. Can't play a movie (thorough iMovie either) as it is slow and jerky. (iLife04).
The whole system has slowed. I recopied iMovie from my external hard drive backup and it worked once and now has returned to dead slow. Recopying doesn't help.
I had a similar problem a while ago when iMovie died and wouldn't open, but restored the whole operating system and it worked.
I don't want to go through that again as I had SO many problems reloading downloaded software and getting the printer to work.
Someone said I may have problems with the hard disk.
I've repaired all the file permissions and now don't know what to do.
Please !!!!
:confused:
 
To check if it's a problem within your Home folder, create a new user account in System Preferences and see how iMovie performs there. Do you have any peripherals plugged in when things slow down?
 
mad jew said:
To check if it's a problem within your Home folder, create a new user account in System Preferences and see how iMovie performs there. Do you have any peripherals plugged in when things slow down?
Click to expand...
Well, I've created a new user account and started up iMovie - it starts really slowly. Although I gave the new account admin preferences it won't open movies that I've created in my user area. Has a little red circle with a hyphen.
Nothing else plugged in at all except the power.
 
It's a slow starting app anyway. On your original account, drag your project to the Shared folder in the Users folder and then try opening it and playing around with it. Do you have any third party apps or plugins associated with QuickTime or iMovie? Is QuickTime performing slowly too? Sorry for all the questions mate, just trying to narrow down to where the problem might be. :)
 
mad jew said:
Good point, but 1GB? Aim for about 8GB free on the boot drive if possible.
Click to expand...
Once I changed all the folder permissions etc I am in under the other user AND it all is still the same. Worked OK until I went to timeline viewer and it got stuck and locked up. (I opened it from the original folder - Movies in the home user).

Then, I tried the following. Copied the project onto the external hard drive and started it all from there with 30GB free space. Same problem. However, just to check, I tried another backed up file from some months ago and it works in as much as I can edit volume through the timeline viewer??? Back to the mac and tried iMovie on a few files. Lockup again.

Now, I "shared" a clip to the desktop (.dv) and then created a new project and imported the clip. I can edit this new project through the timeline viewer as per normal. Am I now getting the message that iMOvie has somehow corrupted all my files and I will need to copy them down, delete the original file, and then create them again ? How can this be ?

Anyway, I decided to do the above this arvo. Copied all the clips to the external drive, made up a new movie and used the copy of iMovie on the external drive. Stayed away from the Powerbook. It was all going well, finished and I moved to timeline viewer when iMovie unexpectedly quit. Once I started it again ALL the above problems returned.
Now, I have had problems with programs unexpectedly quitting before - Safari etc.

By the way, this is not the first time I've had trouble with iMovie - it locked up a month or so ago and I reloaded the original discs and operating system with all the attendant problems that brings. Should I buy iLife06 ? Could I have something wrong with the hard disk ?

I've got 4.1GB free left - a little tight, but enough to write a DVD and then clear this stuff off my system when and if I can get it to work. I had 20GB left on the external drive after all this.

By the way - thanks for all the time you are (all) spending to help me - so much appreciated !!!!
 
Okay, just to be clear, I think you should have 8GB of free space on your boot drive. For an iMovie project, you'll want as much space for page swapping files as possible. Now, if you don't boot up from the external drive, then the free space there is irrelevant. Try dragging some stuff from the PowerBook onto the external so you can free up 8GB of space, then see how iMovie goes for you.

Now it sounds like your problems may go further than just a lack of free space. For starters, I'd start from the OSX discs and run the bundled Disk Utility to repair your drive. Randomly corrupt files can sometimes be attributed to disk errors. :)
 
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