iMovie crashes

[enrique03]

Hi all,

I can't launch iMovie '08. When I try to run the app, the icon appears on the dock, but no screen or message error is shown. It just hangs, and I must do "force quit".

This only happens with my user, as I've tested with other users on the same machine and iMovie seems to be running OK.

I've cleaned my user cache in order to solve any problem with that, but it didn't work at all.

I have installed the last actualization (iMovie 7.1.4)

I doesn't seem to be an interference with iPhoto, as other users have experienced, since I've deleted com.apple.iPhoto.plist and the problem still persists.

Any suggestion? Thank you in advance!

[enrique03]

Now it's solved, it was a problem with Perian

[SARCON]

I had the same problem with iMovie 08 failing to fully open - hanging - on both a PowerPC as well as two Intel macs. At first, I focused on Perian as suggested, but Perian was not the problem. Another post stated that iPhoto was the culprit and suggested deleting the preferences file ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPhoto.plist. This was to be a temporary fix, but did nothing for me. I found that the problem was in corrupted .AVI (type of video) file(s) on the computers. Most likely the bad AVI files are copies of the same on all computers.
I copied all the .avi files to a separate hard drive and deleted all from the computers. When I have time, I'll go through and find which file(s) are corrupted and permanently delete them. The rest, I will return to the computer if necessary. iPhoto often holds AVI video files, so that may be why one user thought the problem was with iPhoto.
Happily, I have fully opened iMovie 08 on the systems for the first time.I'm going to add a few words here to increase the chance that other iMovie almost-users will find this discussion: iMovie 08 won't open spinning beach ball will not fully open freezes