I am working on a big project and I “imported” a 3.6GB (.mov container file) . No other program is hogging my memory whilst I have a high end pc with 6gb RAM what is the problem?
NOTE: I have tried this five times with no luck.
6gb RAM doesn’t seem particularly high-end to me. What about the CPU?
3.6Gb is a large file to open into RAM for editing, especially if you are adding it to a project already in progress.
If for example it’s a 4K file you need at least 16Gb RAM installed (as per minimum requirements)
► https://www.shotcut.org/FAQ/#what-are-the-minimum-system-requirements
You could try Davinci Resolve 14 and see if it handles your file differently?
maybe you could try to cut you file in pieces to see if it’s better.
https://filmora.wondershare.com/video-editing-tips/cut-mov-files.html
Shotcut does not load an entire audio or video clip into memory when you open it! I have files that are over 300 GB that I can open and use. They are 4K ProRes MOV files.
Quite likely the byte size of the video clip does not matter, and Shotcut does not have anything yet named “import” so I don’t know why put that word into quotes. There is something about that clip it does not like. No, I cannot tell you what as I do not have that file, obviously. You can print the output of the tool Media Info here.
Sorry to cause you frustration there.
I assumed this because when I open Shotcut, task manager shows 158Mb of memory use.
If I open a 115Mb .mp4 (for example) this jumps to 427.5Mb used.
I don’t have any files that exceed a Gig, in fact none of my cameras are even capable of save a single file greater than 3.5Gb before they write a new file.
I have the same issue. The MOV file is not as large as josephgodwinke (676,224 KB). Yesterday, Shotcut crashed when previewing my project and the cursor reached the MOV file. Today, Shotcut did not crash when reaching the MOV file, but crashes when I try to add a crop filter to the MOV file.
The resolution of the MOV file is 2560x1080.
There is a PNG image preceeding the MOV file; the project is comprised of just these 2 objects. The MOV file is trimmed from 5 minutes to about 30 seconds.
My CPU is i5-6600K (3.5 GHz), running 64-bit Windows 10.
I have 16GB of ram.
I am using the CPU video; I have no external video card.
I seem to meet the minimum system requirements. Are MOV files know to be buggy in Shotcut?
MOV are just a container, they make comprise of video codecs and audio codecs of various types.
I have several cameras, all of which save as .MOV - none crash Shotcut.
So, tell us more about the camera you use? 
Thank you for the rapid reply, Steve.
The camera is a VanTrue R2 dashcam.
I originally started the project with the MOV file on a backup drive. Then I copied the MOV file to the same folder as the Shotcut project file and pointed Shotcut to the new file upon opening the Shotcut project.
I just put the same MOV file into a new project without the PNG file and it is stable. Perhaps the addition of the PNG provided an unstable environment? Perhaps the MLT file got corrupt? Not sure. I am going to leave the PNG out and carry on.
Here are the properties of the MOV file, from Windows and from Shotcut, if they help. (as a new user, I need to provide several replies to include several pictures)
The audio track is muted, but appears as AAC, 2 channels, 48k sample rate, fltp format.
Here is the metadata properties from Shotcut:
Reading the mov file is OK?
Try to re encode it with handbrake and try again.