Imovie won't let me drag a photo into my project? Why not?

Hi Matthew -

I've been noticing some strange behavior in iMovie that seems to have come with a recent update, and I'll bet you're running into the same issues.

First of all, try this and see if it circumvents your issue: rename the file, like a name using today's date, and then try importing it. I'll bet you $1 it works.

I think iMovie is trying to reduce/eliminate duplicate media being imported into your library. Which is good, but it's doing it in a really stupid way - it's de-duping files by filename, not by, say, the file hash.

I assemble the virtual services every week for my church so I deal with a pile of movies and image files every week. Some of these images have the same filename, but the file contents change weekly (announcement slides, for example - slide1.png, slide2.png, etc). Sometimes, iMovie won't let me import them.

Sometimes - and even more maddening - iMovie will let the file in but then mix it up with the other file by the same name. To add to that madness, the thumbnail displayed in my movie's timeline sometimes is not the same as what is actually incorporated into the final movie!

So, yeah, massively frustrating. I hope Apple is aware of this and is fixing it. Otherwise, I'm going to move to Adobe Premiere.

James

Hi, Matthew,

Try deleting preferences. That often cures import problems.

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. Now see if you can drag photos into iMovie.

Another way to import photos is to click on the Photos item in the iMovie media sidebar. That will display in the media browser screen the photos in your Photos library. You can drag them into the timeline from there.

-- Rich

It seems that something is amiss on your computer. Try resetting the System Management Controller and the NVRAM. It is very easy to do. Check out the following links:

Resetting the System Management Controller:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295

 Resetting the NVRAM or PRAM

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204063

-- Rich

Hold down the Option and Command keys until iMovie begins to load. It should only take a few second for iMovie to load.

Open iMovie, open a project, and look on the left side of the screen. That’s the side bar.

— Rich