Problem – iMovie export has failed

Export errors are pretty scary. They stop your video from becoming a reality, so they can’t be ignored. They’re also pretty confusing – but luckily, there’s a way to decode them. Export errors occur when iMovie can’t find the footage that makes up clips in the timeline, or when the footage is corrupt. Most of the time, this problem won’t present itself until the export, which means that transcoding your footage and editing it again might not be a practical solution.

When an iMovie export fails, a banner notification will come up saying the export has failed. Make sure to click on this as it holds the information you need to diagnose the problem. Whatever else is in the message will end with a number – it’s this number that matters.

Solution 1 – find and delete the problem frame

The number the explanatory message gives is the first frame at which iMovie ran into an error...