iMovie

[tommccann]

hi guys, Right problem is with iMovie and transitions. When importing clips and sound its fine and plays fine but when a transition is added it crashes or skips part of the clips when playing. The strange thing is it happens on all 10 of the Mac Pros which were £3000 each only 6 month ago, so i know its the setup of the mac and not a hardware issue, also when the project was copied across to my macbook it plays fine, and the spec comparison is laughable. any ideas on how to fix this??

[HodgeHi]

What's the setup? are they networked accounts? Local accounts? versions all up to date? What differences are there between the versions on your macbook and the mac pros. Also make sure that all the firmware updates on the Mac pro's have been done.

[tommccann]

imovie is up to date as is the OS, not networked and the spec is unreal :

2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon

3GB memory

640GB hard drive (550+ is free)

NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB

 

macbook is:

2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

2GB DDR3 memory

250GB hard drive

NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics

 

 

so i really don't get it, Google suggests hardware issues but it would be on all 10?! i don't think so

 

o also its not the clips because we have tried different formats and lengths but still the same issue arrises

[HodgeHi]

I would obtain one of these mac pros and then rebuild the OS and applications from scratch. Don't re-image if that's how you deploy as the issue may be with the image/imaging process. Then test again. This will check to see if it is indeed an OS/app issue.

[dayzd]

Just throwing out a few ideas here, so apologies if you've already tried them...:

 

Where's your source video from? Is it HD from an AVCHD camera? I'm not sure how/if iMovie re-encodes AVCHD footage, but I know the raw footage is horrible to deal with - even on high-spec machines.

 

Are you able to re-import the same footage using your MacBook then copying it to one of the Pros?

 

It might sound like vague/lo-fi option, but have you tried creating a fresh user account (admin/restricted) and tried with that? Sometimes account errors cause odd problems.va

[tommccann]

the machines have been built separately so don't think the reload would help really, the footage is off a hd camera any ideas how to make convert it for better performance? the footage is the same when copied from the macbook onto the pros and iv tried the admin account but not created a fresh one

[Arthur]

Any ideas how to make convert it for better performance?

VoltiacHD, ClipWrap or hdffxvrt might be worth a shot? The latter is a shell script which relies on FFmpeg to do the conversion and some settings may need to be changed depending upon your particular camcorder. It is free though, unlike the other two.

 

I'm not sure how/if iMovie re-encodes AVCHD footage, but I know the raw footage is horrible to deal with - even on high-spec machines.

iMovie does re-encode it on import which is why it takes so long and uses a huge amount of disk space.

[HodgeHi]

If your Mac Pros are less than 1 year old then give Apple a call. you could also try to play the source files (iMovie event folder in the Movies folder) directly in Quicktime to see if they are indeed skipping or if it is just iMovie causing the issue.

[tommccann]

If your Mac Pros are less than 1 year old then give Apple a call. you could also try to play the source files (iMovie event folder in the Movies folder) directly in Quicktime to see if they are indeed skipping or if it is just iMovie causing the issue.

 

Yea the videos play fine in quicktime and in iMovie until the transitions are added, i will speak to apple and see tho thanks