iMovie 7.1, iDVD 7.0.1: Hangs/stalls at launch; fixes

Users continue to report, in increasing numbers, an inability to launch iLife applications including iMovie and iDVD after applying the recently released updates (7.1 and 7.0.1 respectively).

Initial analysis leads us to posit that this issue is caused by problematic video, images, etc. that are stored in the individual user's media folders:

Apparently these media were not problematic under the previous releases of the iLife applications in question, but the new releases are more sensitive or perhaps just blindly incompatible with them.

The best thing to do is move all items out of these folders, then put them back one by one or in groups, re-launching iPhoto intermittently, to isolate the problematic item. Some users have reported that network share aliases are the culprits. Move them out of any of the aforementioned folders first and check for persistence of the crashes.

In particular, it appears that network shares may cause the problem. Remove any network shares from the aforementioned folders and check for persistence of the issue. These can sometimes appear in Media Central folders.

You can also try creating a new user account as described in this tutorial, and check for persistence of the issue. If the problem is gone, you know that there is something specific to your user account that is culpable.

MacFixIt reader Matt writes:

"After applying the recent updates, launching iPhoto is OK, but if I go to preferences, I get the spinning beachball. If I let it go for 3 minutes or so, preferences load, pauses again for a couple of minutes with the beachball and then is fine. iMovie gives me the spinning beachball for about 3 or 4 minutes and then loads everything and works fine.

"Neither of these happen on other user accounts on the same machine, a dual 2 GHz G5. [...] I know it is something in my account somewhere, but can't seem to track it down."

John Horvatic adds:

"iDVD 08 stops responding after 30 seconds as well as iMovie 08. Quicktime uninstall and re-install did not solve the problem either besides removing plists running cocktail and disk utility."

David Miller writes:

"Not that I'm using iMovie 7.1 (still using iMovie HD), but at least I was able to launch it prior to last night's update. After the update: iMovie 7.1 launches, but then the processor on my dual 2.5Ghz G5 tower ramps up a bit (fans start to come on). After a few seconds, I get the spinning beach ball for long stretches. Every once in a while the arrow cursor comes back when it's over iMovie but then it goes back to the beach ball.

"I can force quit iMovie 7.1 ('not responding') but this is the state after every launch. I did the install through Software Update, and checking my recent updates, iLife Support 8.1 is in the list. I've restarted; makes no difference. Repair permissions makes no difference. Deleting the iMovie 7.1 and iLife 08 plist files makes no difference."

"Temporarily removing Quicktime components makes no difference. (I've been down this road before, the original iMovie 7.0x wouldn't launch on my system because of an old DIVX 5 decoder component, which I removed and made iMovie 7.0x launchable). I've pulled out nearly every Quicktime component other than the last few Apple issued components and it still beachballs after launching."

"[...] My gut feeling is that it's somehow looking for references to clips from an external drive that I may have imported into the iMovie 07 library/ clip pane while trying it out, but short of deleting the pref files, I don't know where else this could have been hooked in. All of the other iLife 08 updated applications launch correctly, the only problem seems to be with iMovie 7.1."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

Previous coverage:

• iMovie 7.1: Hangs on launch, fixes

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