Last night Maryna and I were using iMovie to import some video footage from our Cam-corder, and in the middle of the import process, the footage would begin stuttering and then the import would stop. IMovie didn't report any errors, and it was obvious that neither the video footage or camera was the source of the problem because there was no stuttering when we played the footage, only when we tried importing it. This problem would have likely left a normal user stumped, fortunately I was able to diagnose and correct the problem immediately.
The problem was due to Maryna's drive being encrypted with the FileVault. The FileVault is essentially using an encrypted disk image to accomplish the encryption. The problem is that the disk image is of a static size, so when it gets filled up, it has to be expanded and then re-encrypted, which doesn't happen fast enough to support video importing in iMovie.
There are two solutions:
1. Disable the FileVault for your home directory.2. Move the iMovie project outside of your home directory.I went with solution number 2. I created a directory outside of Maryna's home directory and moved the current iMovie project to that directory. The directory I created was /Movies/, but this could be anywhere on the drive that isn't encrypted. Then so the change would be transparent to Maryna, I deleted her Movie directory and created a link to the new one. (ln -s /Movies/ ~/Movies).
Everything worked like a charm after that, and the video importing went off without a hitch.
