[MacDV] Problems with new clip start in iMovie

[Dennis Fazio]

On May 18, 2006, at 6:47 PM, Nick Scalise wrote:

> Try the capture from another user account on the machine. You may  
> have a corrupt preference file or something.

Thanks, Nick; good advice, but actually we solved the problem. It  
turns out that you need plenty of space in your /tmp directory, where  
Quicktime must store the clip before moving it to the iMovie project  
directory. The primary system disk was pretty full, so there was only  
enough room to store about 20 minutes of video before it halted.  
Restarting the import triggers a move of that clip, which clears out  
the /tmp directory for a new clip.

So, even though we were storing the iMovie project on a monster  
(250GB) firewire disk, it still depends upon the system disk for a  
lot of space. I guess the only way around that is to keep your system  
disk freed up to save the longest clip you will need or temporarily  
move the /tmp directory with a symbolic link so it is housed on the  
firewire drive.

It was puzzling for a while, since we loaded iMovie 4, and it was  
doing just fine, stringing one 9 minute clip after another. But  
iMovie 5 and 6 can have an unlimited clip size, so it will fill the  
system disk with temporary storage in a short spell if it's nearly full.

Hope this is helpful to save some of you from a similar puzzling fate  
in the future.
-- 
Dennis Fazio
dfz at mac.com