iMovie Application is showing only a black screen.

[snuggleyed1]

Hi,

I am running:

OS X El Capitan
2010 MacBook 13 inch

I am having a serious issue with iMovie 08.

iMovie is not showing content on the screen within the application. It will play music, but no other content. I have produced many iMovie projects int he past without issue, but now the application is basically unusable.

Please help.

 

[chscag]

The latest version of iMovie is 10.1 for El Capitan. Did you just recently upgrade to El Capitan? I also have iMovie 9.0.9 which shows itself as iMovie 11 in the "about" box. I suspect your version of iMovie may be too old to work with El Capitan but am not sure of that. One of our members who is more familiar with the workings of iMovie hopefully will respond to your post. I do not use iMovie.

 

[lclev]

I know I have addressed this issue in some other post - can't find where though. Anyway...

You are due for an update as I believe it is a compatibility issue. I would suggest upgrading to iMovie 10.1.

If you have any previous projects you will have to upgrade them to the newer version. You might check out this from Apple:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202853

Lisa

 

[designsbyliz109]

This problem happened to me out of nowhere after years of successfully using iMovie. I found a (somewhat) solution so even though this thread is really old now, I wanted to sign up to the forum so that anyone in the future can find this on the web as an optional solution to this incredibly annoying problem. I am not very tech-minded, just a gal trying to edit videos for youtube. Been trying for hours on this problem.
Keep in mind this solution is for when VIDEO FILES are showing up black in iMovie preview, not PHOTO FILES. Also it's not a perfect solution as it won't let me use my HD files in imovie, only 720p.

So here's my solution.
> Open your video file in Quicktime. If you have several clips filmed that you want to use in iMovie, you will have to do this for each video file.
>File
>Export As
>720p
>Name your file and save

Import that new file into iMovie.
Again, not ideal as it is forcing you to use only 720p

An alternative, but equally unfavourable solution is to screen record your clip using Quicktime. Then export the audio of your clip from Quicktime. Then piece those together in iMovie.

Seriously I don't get why this issue has happened all of a sudden.
But for anyone else who is searching all day or night for an answer, I hope this will bring you some comfort.