iMovie 3 Export to Camera Stops/Freezes

[William Hofius]

I am using iMovie 3.0.2 on a PowerMac G4 Dual 450 MHz with 1.5 GB of 
RAM running Mac OS X 10.2.4. I have a seperate hard drive for editing 
digital video (internal Maxtor 80 GB HD). I am using a Canon "Ultura" 
digital video camera.

Before starting this project, I used Drive 10 to defragment the hard 
drive and optimize the volume structures.

I used iMovie 3.0.2 to download approximately 4 hours of digital video 
to my hard drive. I have taken approximately 1 hour of this video and 
placed it in the storyboard/timeline. Some of these are complete 
downloaded clips taken whole from the clip tray. Some of these are 
partial clips take by splitting a whole clip into two or more parts. I 
have used the motion effect to speed up the playback of the video 
(which cut the playback time down from 1 hour to about 20 minutes). I 
then placed a few transitions betwen some of the clips in the project.

(My purpose for doing this is to prepare a "time lapse" effect.)

I have tried exporting this 20 minute project back to my digital camera 
with little success.

The export process stops at about 7 minutes into the project. iMovie 
says it is exporting, but the process stops.The image in the preview 
window freezes. The playhead stops moving. The timer in the export 
window does not change. The image in the camera's LCD viewer freezes.

This freeze occurred when the project came to the first transition. 
Believe the transition to be corrupted, I deleted the transition and 
created a new one. Again when I, exported the project, it froze in the 
same place. I simply deleted the transition and decided not to use one 
at this point. Again when I exported the project, it froze.

I force quit iMoive for the umpteenth time. I decided to watch the 
project. The project now stopped playing when it got about 7 minutes 
into the project. Believing the actual video to be corrupt, I deleted 
the first seven minutes of video from the project (since I managed to 
get it on tape). I went to export my new, 13 minute project, to my 
video camera. I got about 6 to 7 minutes into this shorter project when 
the export process froze again, same as above. I followed all of the 
steps, same as above.

I force quit iMovie for the umpteenth*2 time. I deleted these clips 
from from the project, which left about a 6 minute project remaining. I 
went to export my new, 6 minute project. Again, the export process 
froze. Now it is freezing at the end of each and every clip in the 
project storyboard/timeline.

This is driving me batty! Sometimes the export freeze occurrs at a 
transition, sometimes at the end of a clip, sometimes in the middle of 
a clip.

I have repeatedly deleted all iMovie preferences. I have repeatedly 
deleted the iMovie project file and created a new project (using the 
old digital video files by placing them in the Media folder).  Nothing 
fixes this problem.

I have never had this kind of problem before (iMovie 2) but then again, 
I have never had more than an hour of total digital video in any of my 
previous projects. Does iMovie (particularly iMovie 3) have a limit 
with how much digital video can be in a Media folder? Can it only work 
with a certain number of minutes or gigabites of total digital video in 
a project? Is 4 hours (45+ GB) of digital video too much?

I have had all kinds of problems with iMovie 3.0.1 and 3.0.2. Not even 
deleting iMovie and reinstalling it has fixed my issues. Do I need to 
add this to the list?