Enable multitasking in iMovie

Oct 27, '01 09:02:53AM

Contributed by: boboeltoto

Hello,

I dont know if this hint is worth something but if you have been using iMovie you know that when you're either capturing, playing or exporting a movie from or to a DV camera, you can't do anything else. Multitasking during thoses tasks is by default disabled. But you can change that in the following preference file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iMovie.plist
If you want to enable multitasking look for:
        ... ... ...
<key>Option multiTaskDuringCapture: %d
</key>
<false/>
<key>Option multiTaskDuringExport: %d
</key>
<false/>
<key>Option multiTaskDuringPlayback: %d
</key>
<false/>
... ... ...
and change the setting to true instead of false (be sure to have Imovie closed while you edit the file).

Be aware that if those are disabled, it is for a good reason. Capturing and exporting from or to a DV Camcorder need a constant bitrate (3.6MB/sec) and is quite CPU intensive. I didn't have a chance to try this trick since I discovered it but I guess one would need a pretty fast CPU (or even better two CPUs) and a fast HD for this to work. Feedback is welcome!

[Editor's note: I haven't tried this one myself yet, either, but I did verify that the flags are in the plist file.]

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