iMovie 3 problems related to old projects?

[Pat Ellis]

Regarding performance issues with iMovie 3 here is what 
I  have discovered (may not apply to all others).

iMovie stalls, stutters and chokes fairly consistently when 
running a movie created with a previous version - in my 
case, version 2.1.2 regardless of where it is run from (i.e
internal drive, external FW drive).  When run from iMovie 2
(still residing on my FW drive), all is fine.  With movies that
contain multiple soundtracks, video clips and transitions,
the performance degrades rather quickly.  With 1 movie
created in 2.1.2 that contained 2 small video clips, 1 large
one, 1 audio track (the original) and a few transitions (4
to be accurate), it performed exponetially better although
it still "hiccuped" from time to time.

Creating a new imovie in 3.0.1 and importing clips from
a previous one works fine - no stalls or problems of any
kind are encountered.  I believe that iMovie 3 does not
appreciate any work not created by it.  Bad boy! :-)

Another observation - other than the new "total platinum"
look that I just cannot come to like - is how the real 
time progression bar does not flow in real time.  With 2.1.2,
it moved fluidly, one second after another.  With 3.0.1, it
seems to "update" itself every 2 or 3 seconds - new and old
projects alike.

My tests were run on both an 500MHz iMac G3 and an 800MHz
G4 flat panel iMac, both optimised and loaded with 768MB RAM.

Patrick Ellis