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TICKET ARCHIVE -> Imovie And Osx

artieegirl - May 6, 2005 - 5:11 pm

I am using iMovie in OSX (10.3.9) I have found that the movie I am creating is starting to playback is very choppy while in iMovie. I ran disk utilites, I turned off energy saver and installed Cache Out X. It still is acting funny and bogged down. I have read that I might need to get a utility program that will defragment since I guess that becomes a problem in iMovie after many deletes and additions are made to the movie. But, I am also wondering if I need to allocate more memory to the program. I just don't see where you can do that when I go to get info about iMovie. What are your thought?

Thanks,

Sandra

DeltaMac - May 6, 2005 - 8:16 pm

OS X does not require a manual memory allocation, as the system takes care of it automatically (app needs more memory, the system provides it)
You may consider adding more memory to your system.
Defragmenting your entire hard drive is not really needed, unless your drive is getting full (less than 10% free space). Panther does a type of disk optimizing while you are working.
You can easily defragment an iMovie folder/file by copying or duplicating the file folder, then trashing the old folder. This would take less than a minute to complete.
You should make sure that you are not getting low on free space on the hard drive. You should have a minimum of 2 GB free space for efficient use of your system.
Sometimes a simple restart of your computer will do wonders for poor perfomance of your system.

- Dale
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artieegirl - May 9, 2005 - 8:40 am

Dale,

I really appreciate your help on this. I am doing this movie for hire, and am really stuck. I honestly need more clarification on how to defragment my iMovie folder/file by copying or duplicating the file folder, then trashing the old folder.

This morning when I opened up my movie, I have now lost the sound. I am getting nervous about it since I have spent a great deal of time getting to this point and my problems are getting worse. I need to get this finished and delivered asap.

I have a 933 MHz G4 with 2MB L3 cache and 512 MB memory. I have recently done a wipe so the computer does not have a lot of files on the HD. In iMovie it says I have 34.7 GB available. The movie size is 8.98 GB. The only thing I can think is wrong is that it is fragmented. I have done a lot of cutting and pasting and importing and deleting on this project.

I appreciate your help...

Sandy

DeltaMac - May 9, 2005 - 10:31 am

Here's a better stet-by-step to copy your iMovie project
1. Option-drag your existing project folder to your Desktop.
2. When that is complete, drag the same existing project folder to the trash, and empty the trash.
3. Drag your new project folder back to the original location.
4. You are done.
This process naturally de-fragments all the files used with your project.

You can often fix minor issues that show up with OS X by downloading and installing the current Combined Updater for OS X, in this case, 10.3.9, even if you have already installed this version. If you have already downloaded the Combined Updater, don't download that big file again, just install it on top of what you already have.
If you need it, download from here:
http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...pdate1039.html

- Dale
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artieegirl - May 9, 2005 - 1:35 pm

Dale,

I option-dragged my existing iMovie project folder to the Desktop. It took a while, but everything copied to the desktop as it was supposed to. I then dragged the exisiting folder to the trash and emptied it and put the new folder in its place. Unfortunately, the project is gone. In other words, the titled folder opens to an empty iMovie. When the file was on the desktop, it was just like the original. I can't find it anywhere and believe it is gone. What could I have done wrong.

Sandra

DeltaMac - May 9, 2005 - 3:31 pm

Are you saying that no files of any kind exist in that folder?
If there are files in the folder, then try importing into iMovie...select import in the file menu from iMovie, and browse to that copied folder.

- Dale

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artieegirl - May 9, 2005 - 4:47 pm

Dale,

There are some photos that would import, but all the audio and video and everything in the timeline is gone. I can't figure why it did that since I had a spare copy on my desktop that had all the files in it. I have looked everywhere in my computer, and it is not to be found. This afternoon, I have started it over from scratch, because I think it is gone and am working on a deadline. I was wondering if there is a way to retrieve the file after it is deleted.

Sandy

artieegirl - May 13, 2005 - 12:52 pm

Dale,

I wanted to let you know that I have caught up from having lost my movie, and fortunately, I was able to use most of the pieces I had saved on my DV tape and in iPhoto. I did have to reshoot a few things and get back the music, but I am finding that my second movie is turning out better than the first.

I had not heard from you and didn't want to you feel bad about what happened. Who really knows that caused it to do what it did. Again, I appreciate your help.


Sandy