How can I speed up iMovie? iMovie is basically unusable for me at this point. I've got over 1000 video clips (most of them around 6 seconds since they were taken in Vine) and any time I try and switch events or projects it takes anywhere from 30 seconds to 5 minutes (I've timed it).

I'm frustrated enough at this point to drop the $300 on Final Cut Pro X if that's what it takes to actually be able to do anything with my video files. Anyone know if this will actually address the issue? Is Final Cut Pro X going to be able to handle this amount of video files better than iMovie? I really don't want to spend the money and then have the same problems...

I have a Mac Mini purchased in 2011. 8G RAM. 750GM 7,200RPM HD.
I think I've fixed my problem. I had 1000+ movies in iPhoto, and since iMovie just treats them as 1 huge "event" it was trying to open an event with 1000+ movies in it. My HD only had ~10GB empty. I exported them all out of iPhoto, moved them to an external HD, separated them out into individual folders and imported each folder 1 by 1 as a separate event, keeping the files stored on my external HD. I've now got my 3 years of video files all imported and have created 3 different projects which I've taken to completion and posted to Youtube. iMovie is lithe and snappy once again!

So, tips for speeding up iMovie:


Free up HD space so you have >10~15% free
Make sure your events don't have too many video files in them (anything over 50 is getting close to the upper limit it seems)
Consider an external HD, preferably SSD (You can use multiple drives to hold your "events". You're not just limited to your primary HD)