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iMovie is sooo slooooow

CmdrLaForge

CmdrLaForge

macrumors 601
Original poster
Feb 26, 2003
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Hi,:confused:

I have a problem with iMovie HD 6. I am currently editing a vacation video and it is about 100 minutes long. I added many effects, transitions, music and so on. I used quite some Audio FX.

I have an iMac G5 2.1 GHz with 1.5 gigs of RAM.

The problem is that iMovie is now soooooo slow. It is unbelievable. It isn't even possible just playback the movie. It is really horrible.

Now I have got two questions:
1) What can I do in order to make it faster?
I have already cleaned up the trash and I am saving every other minute
2) Is Final Cut Express faster or slower?

Please help me - any advice is great.
Cheers
Andy

iMac G5 iSight 20" 1.5 gig RAM Mac OS X (10.4.5)
 
Have you rendered out your movie? Obviously, you have exceeded the resources of your computer. If the movie is complete, render the final version and it should play ok. Else, get a faster computer. iMovie and iMacs aren't designed for editing and viewing heavy effects from the timeline. For that, you need Finalcut and a PowerMac.
 
Your machine should be able to handle iMovie as far as I know. Are you sure that you're not multitasking your computer without knowing it? Have you checked activity monitor to make sure there aren't any other processes lingering and eating up cpu time or ram? That's the first thing I would look for. Also, you shouldn't expect playback from iMovie to be pristine. You have to realize that the machine is rendering all of your effects in real time when you play it back. If you've loaded lots of effects, playback may become a bit choppy. Export it and then play it back in quicktime. It will play fine then.
 
Yes, all the effects add up and will eventually bog down iMovie no matter how powerful your computer is.

If you're editing a long movie, like you're doing, and want to use a lot of effects, you'll have to split it up somehow. Either by creating several iMovie projects and edit them separately, or by adding effects in several steps and render them into the movie between each step.
 
CmdrLaForge said:
The problem is that iMovie is now soooooo slow. It is unbelievable. It isn't even possible just playback the movie. It is really horrible.
Click to expand...

Is this the DRM issue? If you have iTMS-purchased music in the audio channels (even if it's un-ticked) it causes a playback speed issue. You should notice the playback is only affected in the sections where the audio is present.

If so, temporarily delete those songs and add as a final step. Once exported to iDVD/QT Movie it should be fine (though I haven't completed my project yet :( )

Apart from that also make sure you have 5GB+ disk space and use Activity Monitor to check for CPU leaches (make sure you've uninstalled Virex)

McD
 
It's not the hardware that bogs you down, it's software. iMovie really starts to lag heavily in big projects, so I suggest you to get Final Cut. It's much better and can open iMovie projects, so you don't have to re-do everything :)

I personally use Final Cut Pro and I really like it, iMovie sucks compared to it
 
Do you think you've hit 99 audio clips? If so, iMovie can't handle any more than that and it bogs down horribly.

Suggestion - take one of the soundtrack lines that you don't think you're going to tweak any more (or a section of it) - and export it as AIFF.

Then you can delete those (multiple) sounds from your soundtrack and put the single AIFF file in its place.

Watch iMovie fly again...
 
Hi,

thanks a lot for all your replys. I will try them out and let you know what really helped.

In the meantime I have the next problem. I decided hence I couldn't edit the movie any longer that I just export it to iDVD and make a DVD as it is.

Well - surprissing it is not passing the Audio rendering.

Then I tried to export it to Garageband which is then crashing.

Then I tried to export as a Quicktime. Crashing as well.

Ohh welll. I hope the universal version of FCE is coming out soon.

Again - thanks for your support - I will try your tipps.

LaForge
 
Applespider said:
Do you think you've hit 99 audio clips? If so, iMovie can't handle any more than that and it bogs down horribly.

Suggestion - take one of the soundtrack lines that you don't think you're going to tweak any more (or a section of it) - and export it as AIFF.

Then you can delete those (multiple) sounds from your soundtrack and put the single AIFF file in its place.

Watch iMovie fly again...
Click to expand...

Am I doing this using Quicktime export? I guess so. I really hope that solves my problem. If so - I owe you a beer.
 
CmdrLaForge said:
Well - surprissing it is not passing the Audio rendering.
Click to expand...

Definitely sounds like a 'too many sound clips' problem. I had something similar a few months back where it suddenly bogged down and became more or less unusable.

I was able to export a single track of the audio (around 40 clips) rather than the whole thing and once they were out, and the single track added back in, iMovie went back to normal - and adding a few extra tracks didn't affect it.

I think that 99 audio clip limit is only listed under the iMovie/FCE/FCP comparison table; I know I pulled my hair out at the time and tried that as a last resort but then finding out about the limit later, the solution suddenly seemed more logical
 
CmdrLaForge said:
Am I doing this using Quicktime export? I guess so. I really hope that solves my problem. If so - I owe you a beer.
Click to expand...

Yes - only select the audio line that you want then Share>Quicktime

If you're doing 'selected clips', then say 'selected clips only'.

Then choose Expert Settings and select Sound to AIFF from the dropdown.

It might take a little while (and you might have to split it into two) - mine were evenly spaced across the two audio tracks.

Good luck, I hope it solves the problem for you
 
Applespider said:
Yes - only select the audio line that you want then Share>Quicktime

If you're doing 'selected clips', then say 'selected clips only'.

Then choose Expert Settings and select Sound to AIFF from the dropdown.

It might take a little while (and you might have to split it into two) - mine were evenly spaced across the two audio tracks.

Good luck, I hope it solves the problem for you
Click to expand...

Thanks - I will try that. It really takes a while. I currently export as DV film (started before I saw your reply) and the iMac is now rendering for some hours.

I didn't count all the clips - but I have many many.

Thanks again
Cheers
LaForge

EDIT: now I stopped exporting to DV. iMovie said remaining time: 5432 minutes. Thank you. I will try the Audio export option. Hope that it works. Let you know tomorrow
 
iMovie To Final Cut

iMovie is great and probably the easiest way for anyone to make an entrance into movie editing. But as you grow, and as your projects grow, you will hit the hard reality of iMovie's performance constraints and find yourself transitioning to Final Cut. Sounds like you may have hit those constraints and should probably start thinking about investing in Final Cut.
 
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