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iMovie cannot open videos created on iPhone 11 using the camera?

I have an iPhone 11 Pro, ver 14.71 - iMovie won't recognize the videos created with my camera - throws up this message "The application “iMovie” cannot open the specified document or URL" . This occurs regardless of whether I try to open and edit it direct from Photos, or whether I try to import it from a file that I've messaged or otherwise sent to myself and downloaded. What's the deal ?


Posted on Aug 27, 2021 8:42 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Aug 28, 2021 9:08 AM

I don't know what is causing iMovie not to open the iPhone 11 videos. What is the frame rate of the video clip? Is the iPhone video recorded with the HDR setting on? Is it in HEVC format? What version of iMovie and operating system are you using?


In any event, the first thing to try is to delete preferences and then see if iMovie will open the video clip. To delete preferences open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


If deleting preferences does not cure it, try creating a new project and see if you can import into it and have iMovie open the movie.


Failing that, try converting your troublesome clips to H.264, Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake. Do that even if the codec already is indicated to be Mp4/AAC. Re-rendering often cures the issue.


You can get Handbrake here:


https://handbrake.fr/


A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source. Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen. Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.


-- Rich

1 reply
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Aug 28, 2021 9:08 AM in response to MMerc14

I don't know what is causing iMovie not to open the iPhone 11 videos. What is the frame rate of the video clip? Is the iPhone video recorded with the HDR setting on? Is it in HEVC format? What version of iMovie and operating system are you using?


In any event, the first thing to try is to delete preferences and then see if iMovie will open the video clip. To delete preferences open iMovie while holding down the Option and Command keys and select to delete preferences in the box that appears. iMovie will open in a new library. Reopen your old library to get back to your projects.  Deleting preferences is a safe procedure that will not cause data loss or disruption to your project.


If deleting preferences does not cure it, try creating a new project and see if you can import into it and have iMovie open the movie.


Failing that, try converting your troublesome clips to H.264, Mp4/AAC with the free download, Handbrake. Do that even if the codec already is indicated to be Mp4/AAC. Re-rendering often cures the issue.


You can get Handbrake here:


https://handbrake.fr/


A simple way to do it is to open Handbrake and do a File/Open Source. Navigate to your video and choose it as the source from the resulting screen. Then do File/Start Encoding. Wait a couple of minutes for the conversion to complete. Then save and import the converted clip into iMovie.


-- Rich

iMovie cannot open videos created on iPhone 11 using the camera?

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