iMovie emergency - please help if you can

I have never made a project in i-movie HD exceeding 20 minutes - which is still long if the project involves many transitions, effects and sound. The project I am working on is for my first customer and I need to finish it so I can get paid as money is running low.

The project is just over half way but my macbook pro is struggling after 27 minutes, and during playback the sound is now suffering.

I have deleted many files and unused applications to make more space but it doesn't seem to make much space in i-movie HD.

I have tried exportig the project and working from a hard drive but once on a hard drive it for some reason can not render fast and slow mo clips.

I now have a copy on hard drive and the sound on both copy and master is choppy and distorted. I realise that when burned to i-DVD it will probably be fine but I need to finish it first and I have at least another 20 minutes of material to add before this is complete.

I realise that ideally I should be working in FCP and from an i-mac not a laptop but I can't afford an i-mac at this stage,the laptop is all I have and I exported FCP to hard drive to make more room (which I have been told has probably spoiled it but I never had the time to learn it anyway).

What is causing my problems and how can I finish this project with the same ease in which I started it?

You're probably not going to like this but it's really all I can think of.

Would it be possible just to create smaller clips then import them all back into iMove, put the smaller clips on the timeline and export the final project so that it's all joined back up together?

I don't know if you knew this but there's a shortcut to importing clips into iMovie you can read all about it here.

The link took me to the horrid I-movie 08 so I don't think it's applicable to my situation.

Importing clips isn't a problem - I import the clips in sections to make it easier, not all at once.

What is wrong with the sound and how can I make more space?

cameronryan said:

The link took me to the horrid I-movie 08 so I don't think it's applicable to my situation.

Click to expand...

The part I was referring to is a Finder tip and has nothing to do with iMovie '06 or '08.

The fast importing tip was just offered for when you wanted to import the small clips back in to join them together for final export, as per my suggestion.

cameronryan said:

Importing clips isn't a problem

Click to expand...

I figured you could ease the load on your HD/CPU or whatever is involved by just exporting small sections to start with as working that small section may alleviate the problems.

I was really just trying to offer advice on how to deal with the sound/space issue and definately am not under any impression that you had an importing issue ....





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I use MBP for several 1 hour dvds. No problems that you mention. Sounds like you may be short on memory.

^ Is that what is causing the stutter?

The i-movie memory seems to be detatched from the main memory - I exported 2 large applications and it made little difference to the space.

part of problem with use of external hard drive may be he way it is formated.i had a similar problem with slow/fast/ reverse. Once I reformatted my external drive to be more compatibal wih a mac instead of set up for primary use with a pc , it works fine. save all your files from the external on disc or hard drive or whatever, then go to disc utility and reformat the external drive. This fixed alot of problems I was having with imovie.