Problem – editing on iMovie is slow or choppy
Stuttery editing is a bit more of a nebulous problem – there could be all sorts of reasons why iMovie is slow. The next port of call if restarting iMovie doesn’t help is to restart your Mac, but make sure you do so safely:
- Wait for any current iMovie tasks to finish (look at the white circle in the top right of the iMovie window).
- Quit iMovie with ⌘ + Q to make sure your progress has been saved.
- Restart your Mac.
- Reopen iMovie. If you have multiple iMovie Libraries, only open the one(s) you need for the project. This will put less strain on iMovie.
If a restart doesn’t work, it’s time to diagnose why iMovie might be struggling. The first step to working out the problem is asking yourself whether you’re working on a particularly intensive project. Your Mac may be struggling to render all the clips in the timeline if:
- The project settings are set to 4K and...