I have been converting 8mm movies and combining those mp4 clips in iMovie. When I try to play some of my exports it will only play 1-7 seconds of the movie. The file sizes are over 1gb so I am assuming more has been rendered.
What am I doing wrong?
If the movie plays all the way through in the iMovie project timeline then the 8mm import completed correctly. So your issue pertains to a faulty export, unless there is some glitch in the playback app. Sometimes export issues can be caused by a corrupt iMovie preference. Try deleting preferences and then see if you can export and play the entire movie.
To delete preferences, open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects. Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.
-- Rich
Rich, thanks for the suggestion. I deleted the preferences, restarted iMovie an recreated the mp4 file. I then tried to view the video in QuickTime Player and it still has a duration of 1 sec even though the file is 1.31gb and took 25 minutes to render and export.
Any other suggestions?
Possibly there is some corruption at the very beginning of the movie that is causing the issue. Expand your timeline full out with the slider located above and to the right of the timeline. Then scroll around at the beginning of the movie, looking for black frames, white flashes, artifacts and any other signs of corruption. Cut out any that you find and see if you can get a good export. In fact, if the exported movie plays for only one second, you might just trim off a couple of seconds of the video in the timeline and see if that solves it. There may be a time stamp or something that is causing the interruption.
-- Rich
I have tried clipping the first 2-3 seconds and redoing the export but still get the same result. I did not see any black or white frames or any other indicator of corruption.
I have created a new project and reimported the clips. That new project is exporting now. It will be interesting to see if this is different.
I found that if I leave the Compress setting at "Faster" rather than changing the exporting works fine.
Yes, sometimes an issue can be confined to just one specific project, and does not happen with a new project.
-- Rich
Hmmmm. That's interesting. Glad that it worked.
-- Rich
iMovie export only plays short portion of movie
