32.2. General iMovie Troubleshooting Let's start general, shall we? 32.2.1. Weird Inconsistent Problems When a program's preferences file becomes scrambled, all kinds of peculiar behavior can result. Buttons and functions don't work. Visual anomalies appear. Things just don't work right. If iMovie starts having a bad hair day, suspect its preferences file. Quit the program, open your Home  Library Preferences folder, and throw away the file called com.apple.iMovie. plist . The next time you run iMovie, it will automatically build a new preferences file. This file will have the original factory settings (for the options in, for example, the Preferences dialog box), but at least it will be healthy and whole. 32.2.2. Keeping Your Hard Disk Happy Remember the old expression, "If Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy"? Well, if your hard disk isn't happy, iMovie won't be happy, either. Here's a short list of maintenance suggestions. A little attention every week or so may help keep minor hard drive problems from becoming major problems. -
After installing or updating any software, use Disk Utility to Repair Permissions. (Disk Utility is in your Applications Utilities folder. Click the First Aid tab, click your hard drive, and then click Repair Permissions.) UP TO SPEED
Really Massive iMovie File Problems | | The disk your iMovie HD project sits on must be prepared using the Mac OS Extended formatting scheme, also known as HFS+. All Apple drives come formatted that way, but some people have been known to buy an external FireWire hard drive from another company, plug it in, save an iMovie project onto it, and immediately run into massive problems. The fun may include dialog boxes that complain about file permissions, missing files, and "Icon" documents. If you've just bought a new drive, check the disk format before using it. Do that by highlighting the disk icon in the Finder and choosing File Get Info. Under the Format heading in the resulting dialog box, youll see the formatting scheme identified. If the format isn't correct, use Disk Utility to reformat the drive (which involves erasing the whole drive). |
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Every couple of months, restart your Mac from the Mac OS X CD, choose File Disk Utility, click the First Aid tab, click your hard drive icon, and click Repair Disk. -
Mac OS X runs three behind-the-scenes Unix maintenance programs at regular intervals between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. If your Mac is asleep or turned off every night, the maintenance probably isn't being done, because the Mac doesn't wake itself up to do the maintenance. If you don't regularly leave your Mac running overnight, take a minute, every month or so, to run MacJanitora free program that runs those same maintenance programs, but at your command. (You can get it from the "Missing CD" page at www.missingmanuals.com, among other places.) |
