Why is my iMovie taking forever to export a 5 GB file?
I try to export a 34 min file in 1080 p - the estimate says it's about 5.3 GB. When the export time comes up it's over three hours - am I doing something wrong?
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 14.3
If you chose to export with the Best Quality (pro res) setting your export time would be about 4x longer than if you chose the “Best” setting, because of the much larger bitrate. And you would have a 4x file size. The Best Quality (pro res) setting is apprpriate for professional use where precision editing is required but is unnecessary for ordinary consumer use. The naked eye probably wouldn’t notice the difference in quality.
If the above is not applicable to your situation, possibly the available free space on youy application drive is too low to allow iMovie to function efficiently.
— Rich