iMovie project sharing stalls at halfway and stops on Mac mini M1

Question

iMovie project sharing stalls at halfway and stops on Mac mini M1

I am a heavy user of iMovie. Multiple projects, Multiple videos on my YouTube channel. I am running iMovie on an M1 Mac mini with the most current version and most current MacOS. I have run into a problem where I am trying to share a project to social media. I usually share at 720p and post the videos to YouTube, but my current project stopped rendering. I exported once and the QuickTime file was fine, but I decided to make some changes. When I edited the project and tried to export it again, the progress indicator got about halfway, then stopped. There were no error messages. The program doesn't freeze. I don't see any missing media. No explanation. I can keep using the program, but I can't cancel the export. The only way to cancel is force quit. When I made changes, I added a few photos, but those photos are in the project folder. When I look under the media tab, all of the photos, video clips and music are all there. No missing media notifications. I tried the trick to clear Preferences. No help. I moved the project to another Mac and the same thing happened.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Original Title: iMovie project sharing stalls

Posted on Aug 6, 2025 2:32 PM

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Answer 1

Aug 7, 2025 6:13 AM in response to Mark Chambers1

More information: A file is created. When I look in finder, I see the movie file listed and the size is as expected, but

Quicktime can’t open it. Since the probelm persists when I move the project, I assume it is the project itself. It was

suggested that since the progress report stops about halfway, the problen is in that part of the video. I have looked carefully and I can’t find any damaged or defective elements. I realize that I will have to redo the project. I just wish I could understand what went wrong.

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