MacBook display issue with iMovie 08

[jaseman]

My wife is using a MacBook 2GHz Intel Core Duo with 1GB SDRAM running Leopard and iLife 08 to manage photos and edit imported video footage.

There seems to be a big problem with iMovie 08. Every time she opens the application and hovers over some video footage to view the preview the screen display mucks up. There seems to be a snow like effect in particular across the application and throughout the menus. I have attached a screen grab of the top menu.

The only way to clear this seems to be to reboot the laptop. No other application causes this issue and I have checked the activity monitor and there is still plenty of memory available.

As a final check I have imported the video footage into the previous version of iMovie HD on the same laptop and that works fine.

Does anyone know why this may be happening and how I could go about resolving it? My only other thought was to re-install iLife 08.

 

[kkat69]

I know this is gonna sound useless but have you tried repairing permissions? It seems to be a 'fix all' and it probably wouldn't hurt to try.

Only thing I can offer

My wife has the 2.2 SR MB and her iMovie works ok last time I checked. Doesn't sound like it's a card or mem issue. I would have said memory issue at first but you said you checked activity monitor and it showed ok.

Puzzling.

 

[jaseman]

Thanks for your feedback, I have tried repairing the disk permissions using the Apple disk utility and have also manually run the Mac OSX maintenance scripts through terminal as they only run during the night if the laptop is left running.

Unfortunately these did not fix the issue.

 

[kkat69]

Thanks for your feedback, I have tried repairing the disk permissions using the Apple disk utility and have also manually run the Mac OSX maintenance scripts through terminal as they only run during the night if the laptop is left running.

Unfortunately these did not fix the issue.

I would say reinstall of iMovie '08 then might be the next step unless someone else has seen a similar issue and knows of a fix (plist removal, preferences, etc).

Be careful to ensure none of your personal stuff gets corrupted or removed, that would be bad.

 

[Kalafut]

well it would never hurt to get more ram, i am constantly using a little more than 1gb and i am just doing basic stuff.

 

[crazzyeddie]

It looks like a bigger problem than just iMovie, but before we jump to conclusions I would try to reinstall the entire OS... I know its a pain but if that doesn't work then its probably a hardware problem.

 

[kkat69]

It looks like a bigger problem than just iMovie, but before we jump to conclusions I would try to reinstall the entire OS... I know its a pain but if that doesn't work then its probably a hardware problem.

Re-installing iMovie would be a lot easier than re-installing the OS. Re-instaling the OS would fall more in like with "jumping to conclusions" than just iLife considering...

As a final check I have imported the video footage into the previous version of iMovie HD on the same laptop and that works fine.

Re-installing the OS, to me would be close to the last thing I'd check after verifying iMovie installation was ok because if it WAS iMovie re-installing (if you preserved the users data) would still have the bad iMovie installation and you would have to re-install iMovie anyway.

Would seem logical since the OP said it only happens in '08 and doesn't happen in '06.

 

[digitalnicotine]

OP: Check out this thread. It looks like a trip to the genius bar my be in order.

 

[jaseman]

I will try re-installing iLife first, as only iMovie seems to be causing the problem.

Other than that I am popping into the Apple store tomorrow, so will take the MacBook in to show them before re-installing to see if they have seen the issue before.

 

[leekohler]

My vote is either software or RAM- maybe a bit of both.