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Advice for skipping in iMovie

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I have a Macbook Pro, 2.4 GHz, 2GB with 10.6.3 and iMovie 09 (v8.0.6)

I have made a movie that is about 25 minutes long with imported iTunes music, a number of voiceovers, and effects, such as picture-in-picture and cut-aways. I experience often that the movie is choppy and that the effects never appear, the film just freezes for that portion.

Is it a lack of memory that is causing this?

I have my iTunes music on an eHDD and I have to first activate iTunes so that the song files in iMovie are "seen". I close everything else down when I run the movie or do a conversion in iMovie.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
21" iMac * 2.8 Ghz Intel Core i7 * 16GB 1333 Mhz DDR3 * 1TB HD *AMD Radeon HD 6770M 512 MB
Sounds like a memory problem to me, though I can't be sure. Try exporting the movie. I bet the effects appear fine in the final version. If not, then you'll know your problem is something else. But if you have a long video with many effects, it could also be working the graphics card really hard, and its integrated, not discrete like on other MBP models. Have you tried closing any other programs that might be using RAM or processing power?
 
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Your Mac's Specs
2011 MBP, i7, 16GB RAM, MBP 2.16Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram, Dual 867Mhz MDD, 1.75GB ram, ATI 9800 Pro vid
Is the MacBoook Pro one with only integrated video? That would be all 13" models and the lower end of the newer 15" models.

You can check memory issues by using Activity Monitor. Click on the System Memory tab near the bottom and look to see if you have much free memory but especially if the 'Page outs' continue to climb. All of course while doing your video editing work.
 
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Thanks for the replies. I assume it's a memory problem. I don't know how to check if I have a MBP with an integrated card.

It's a MBP 15" from June 2009; purchased a few weeks before the current line was introduced. It's the one with a removable battery.
 
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2011 MBP, i7, 16GB RAM, MBP 2.16Ghz Core Duo, 2GB ram, Dual 867Mhz MDD, 1.75GB ram, ATI 9800 Pro vid
Sounds like you have this version introduced in October of 08'.

Use 'System Profiler' in the Utilities folder to review the 'Hardware' 'Graphics/Displays' entry. Compare that to the above links 'Video:' entry.

I believe that MBP needs to have the choice of video adapter set in system preferences and a reboot is required when changing it. I'm not sure how to tell which one is active, but you would want to use the 9600M when doing demanding imaging work. I'm vague on this because I don't have that model.
 

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