Archiving iMovie 7.1 on external drives

I am digitizing old family movies via iMovie (7.1) that is housed on my MacBook Pro laptop (10.4.11). To save hard drive space I would like to archive these and others movies on a 500 GB external drive, and THEN erase them from my laptop drive. I want to make sure I am doing things right before I get too far into the project.
Can I just move the iMovie Projects to the external drive, or do I also need to move the iMovie Projects AND Events over. Do I need to install the iMovie software package in the external drive as well?
If there is an easier ot more efficient way of doing this kind of work, I'd welcome all suggestions
Thanks,
EW

The external drive MUST be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and MUST be connected by firewire.
Keep the application on your startup drive, but the projects can reside on the external drive, subject to the above.
Make doubly sure everything works before deleting the originals!

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If I back up iMovie projects to an external drive does it take the media with it? I want to free up space and remove pictures that were in iPhoto...that were used as media by iMovie when project was under way. In short I want archive iMovie stuff

If I back up iMovie projects to an external drive does imovie take the media with it? I want to free up space and remove pictures that were in iPhoto...that were used as media by iMovie when project was under way. In short I want archive iMovie stuff. If I pull pics out of iPhoto, and later want to drag an archived projet bac into iMovie and the pics are no longer in iPhoto, will I be able to keep working in the project in iMovie?

Very likely not, as the iPhoto's can be used for something else.
More like it took a copy, or it's referencing that spot on the drive in the editable files and most likely made a copy to create a new permanent export file.
Sample one picture and a iMovie file and see what happens.

How to move an iMovie project to an external drive ?

Hi I need to move my iMovie project to an external drive, to free some space, please help. if it's possible.....

To make sure that all required media is in the library contain the project you need to "Consolidate media" see: http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov882dee351
You can then copy the library to your laptop with the Finder and open it with the same version of iMovie. The last phrase is important since Apple has made changes in the project format several times even between minor updates of iMovie 10. Earlier versions may not be able to read the library and later versions (not possible in this case) may cause the project to be updated so that it is no longer readable by the desktop version. iMovie on the laptop will not at first find the copied library - you will have either to double click on it or File - Open library - Other and navigate to its location.
Geoff.

Moving iMovie Projects to an external drive

I cannot move iMovie projects to an external drive. I have followed the instructions. Help!

If it doesn't recognize the drag, then there is something else awry. You should be able to force a move instead of a copy by holding down the cmd key. Can you just plain copy?
If the destination does not become highlighted, the OS doesn't think it can accept the item for some reason.

I have an iMac about a year old. It has OSX 10.8.3 with iMovie 9.0.8. Is there a way to get iMovie to store and use iMovie Events on an external drive? Raw video is eating up my 1TB internal drive.

I have an iMac about a year old. It has OSX 10.8.3 with iMovie 9.0.8. Is there a way to get iMovie to store and use iMovie Events on an external drive? Raw video is eating up my 1TB internal drive.

Yes, you can import to an external drive by choosing it from the Import Screen.
Once an Event or Project is in iMovie, it is best to move it to the external using iMovie, so the Project does not lose links to the Event.
For full instructions on how to do this, see this link.
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4141

Moving iPhoto, Photo Booth, & iMovie library to an external drive

I've search through most of the support community and still havent found a concrete answer. Like most my current internal harddrive is about full. Mostly filled with photos and movies. I have a external harddrive that Time Machine is enabled. I also backed u my iphoto & photo booth library to the external drive. I have yet to move over any imovie data until I am sure that process will work.
How do I move all data over so that iphoto, photo booth, & imovie can be ran fom my external harddrive. Also how can I ensure that imovie will direct itself to the iphoto library on my external because all movies from the past use the iphoto library as its directory. Once this is done I would like to delete all previous data off of my nternal drive
Thank you

. I have a external harddrive that Time Machine is enabled. I also backed u my iphoto & photo booth library to the external drive. I have yet to move over any imovie data until I am sure that process will work.
Do you want to store your movies and photos on your Time Machine drive? That is not recommended, since you will not have a backup, if the media are only on your backup volume. You will need a second drive in addition to your backup drive, and this drive needs to be formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled), otherwise you cannot store photo libraries (iPhoto, Aperture) or iMovie events on that drive, see: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture (remember, thta formatting erases a drive, you have to save any contents to another drive before formatting).
For iPhoto: Once your external drive has the correct file system, simply select your iPhoto library in the Finder and drag it to that drive. Then double click the copied library to open it in iPhoto.
For iMovie: To move your iMovie events to an external drive, use the event browser in iMovie - don't use the Finder!
See this Help page: Copy or move video from your Event Library to an external ... http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2302
I don't use Photo Booth, so I do not know how to move your Photo Booth photos.
Regards
Léonie

I am saving a video on iMovie directly to my external drive this video I'm saving is 4 hours long! when i click save nothing happens can you please help?

i am saving a video on iMovie directly to my external drive
this video I'm saving is 4 hours long!
when i click save nothing happens
can you please help?

Michael: are you still using an old version o0f PSE (e.g. PSE V4)? Problems similar to the one that you described are relatively frequent in old PSE Versions ( I was suffering a lot from them)..... and there are quite seldom in newer PSE versions. Unfortunately, I do not remember which PSE Version became much better in this area (was it V5? or V6?)
If using an older PSE version and encoutering often the problem: consider to migrate to a newer PSE Version..

How do I Retrieve imovie projects from and external drive back into my mac internal drive

How do I Retrieve imovie projects from and external drive back into my mac internal drive?
Thank You

Every working drive, Internal or External, should produce an Icon on your Desktop. If you cannot see those, click on the Desktop (to get Finder) and choose Preferences off the Finder Menu. The general pane has checkboxes for "Show these items on the Desktop:"
Double click the Icon for your External Drive to open it. Open the folders on it until you find the Items you want to copy. Drag them to the Icon of your Internal Drive, or open the folder where you want them to land and drop them in there.
A drive that does not appear on the desktop after you have asked it to may be damaged. But it would be smart to do a Restart to see if it is recognized again at next Startup.

Moving the iMovie app to an external drive

I currently download a lot of video each day into iMovie and I am constantly running into an issue where I am out of hard-drive disk space. It really limits how much video I can work on at one time. I called and spoke with a member of the Apple Support App Team and he advised that I move the iMovie app to an external hard drive to resolve the issue. I have since done that, but the video clips are still saving to my internal hard-drive instead of the external hard-drive where the app is. When I moved the iMovie app to the external hard-drive, I disconnected the external hard-drive and deleted the app from my internal hard-drive. After emptying the trash, I re-connected the external hard-drive and opened iMovie and began importing movie clips. A little while later, I ran Omni Disk Sweeper and all of the clips that I imported still show on my internal and meanwhile, the external's capacity is only showing the iMovie app itself and no clips. Any ideas on how I can route the clips to the external instead of my Mac's internal hard-drive?

Instead of moving the iMovie application, click here and follow the instructions.
(123002)

Recover an iMovie from a failed external drive?

Has anyone been able to get an entire iMovie recovered from a failed external Firewire drive? My LaCie just won't power up despite having its light come on, and having other external drives connected through it to my iMac and working fine.
I was about to do some backing up after finishing some edits on my latest iMovie, located on that drive. The edits were taking a longer time than usual, with spinning beach ball going on and on, so I decided to restart the Mac and see if that would speed things up. A restart resulted in a totally white screen for over 20 minutes, so I powered off with the switch, and powered on again with it a few minutes later. After three tries, including trying to boot from the installation disk, the iMac sprang to life again, and three of my external drives came on as usual, but not the La Cie that has my iPhotoLibraries and the iMovies I am working on. It is not a problem with power cords or the Firewire cables, as I swapped them out with the other drives, and everything works except this drive will not power up. Its light comes on, and the Firewire ports allow the other drive to come on, as this one is the one connected to the iMac, but the drive remains cold and quiet, just sits there with its blue light blinking.
I just need it to power on long enough to transfer my data to another drive.
I will settle for drive-recovery if that means I will get all my movies and photos back......anyone ever had to use a drive recovery service for this? If so, how did it work?
I do have backups for the photos, but not all of them as I don't usually backup every day. The movies will have to be recreated I can do this, it will just take lots of time......
not happy with this situation....any support/sympathy greatly appreciated!

Beverly Maneatis wrote:
.. The drive comes on and its light blinks, but does not progress to the drive powering up and the light becoming a solid nonblinking. ..
sorry to contradict you, Bev, but the drive itself has no lights.. :
(pic by wikipedia)
THIS is your drive with your precious data .. no blinks ...
ok, I'm a typically 'Tim Taylor/Home Improvement'-guy (incl. friends in hospital...), so maybe a daredevil about screwing things up/open (pun-taaaa). if you open the housing (usually 4 screws on bottom), you would see a power-supply, some small board for the interface electronics, a fan, some small board for some other electronics. and two cables: one with 4 cables (=power), one flat cable with ~20something wires (=data).. the drive is fixed with another four screws.. it is really dead easy, and you can not damage the drive itself, except you wear some angora and plastic sandals, to get some zillion of volts of static electricity into your fingertips ...
so, if you find a nice PC-guy, ask him to place the drive into another housing (usb or fw.. doesn't matter...).. for a pro, that is a 5min procedure.. I'm pretty sure, it will work! < fingers crossed > < throwing ash over shoulder > < murmering some Hun's incantaion >

How do I import an imovie project from an external drive to imovie?

My hard drive on Macbook Pro 2009 recently crashed. Luckily I backed up my imovie projects on an external. I upgraded with new hard drive and installed snow leopard. I transferred this particular imovie project from external to the 'movies' folder on the internal drive. When I launch imovie to find this particular imovie project all I see are various folders associated with this particular project not the imovie project icon (the icon where I double click and begin editing). If I try to import directly from external drive the project icons are grayed out.
Furthermore if I try to import any video (whether from external or internal drive) on imovie it says:
This file could not be moved:
(Insufficient access privileges for operation )
All movie files play on quicktime when I test them, so I'm unsure as to why I don't have access privileges.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any replies to this one? Anyone????

How can I move an iMovie Project to an external drive in latest version (10.0.7)

I am trying to transfer an iMovie project from my desktop to my laptop to work on it anywhere. I have seen ways to do this in earlier releases but they do not work for the current version (10.0.7.)
I have a Mac OS Extended (journaled) USB drive. Previous threads have said that the external drive will show up in the "Events Library." This version of iMovie does not have an "Events Library" and the button to make it visible in previous versions is gone. I have looked at the Apple Support link iMovie '11: Copy or move a project to an external hard disk, but this won't work on the latest version release.
I can't seem to find any way to move my project to the external drive.
Any thoughts? Thanks

To make sure that all required media is in the library contain the project you need to "Consolidate media" see: http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov882dee351
You can then copy the library to your laptop with the Finder and open it with the same version of iMovie. The last phrase is important since Apple has made changes in the project format several times even between minor updates of iMovie 10. Earlier versions may not be able to read the library and later versions (not possible in this case) may cause the project to be updated so that it is no longer readable by the desktop version. iMovie on the laptop will not at first find the copied library - you will have either to double click on it or File - Open library - Other and navigate to its location.
Geoff.

IMovie 9 not recognizing external drive

Hi - has anyone experienced iMovie 9 not letting you save an event folder/project folder to an external drive?
It seems to see them but has a yellow bang symbol next to it. It is a MyBook drive. I've tried right clicking but there is no indication what the problem is.
I don't have enough room on my MacBook Pro to create my movie so I want to import my event files and same my project on he MyBook drive but the only place I have to save is my local drive. Any suggestions?
--Laureen

Check how your Mybook drive is formatted. iMovie will only recognize drives that are formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). If your drive is formatted as FAT32, iMovie will not see it.
You can easily reformat a drive using Disk Utility, but be aware that reformatting will erase anything that is currently on that drive.
To reformat,
Open Disk Utility
Partition the drive with one partition using GUID.
Erase the drive using Mac OS Extended (journaled) as format.

Imovie not reading my external drive

Have a bunch of imovie events I dragged from iMac at work to my Lacie 1tb ext drive. Have connected it to my MBP for editing at home. IMovie recognizes the external drive but the events are not showing up under the drive symbol after opening it (arrow pointing down)
confused?
Help would be appreciated
thanks

I have uninstalled Crossover. Still no luck. Here is what I see:
After plugging in the drive:
Then I see this image while the drive is still visible as in image 1:
Followed by:
As you can see, it is like the drive just disappears. Judging from the time stamps on the Screen Shots, it takes the whole process about 32 seconds.
It shows up in the Disk Utility while it is connected before it gets booted:
I am at a loss for what to do. Thank you for all your help so far, though!

Can I archive my iMovie project to an external drive? how?

I have been searching this forum for an answer but so far have only found how to save my iMovie project to DVD. The problem is, my movie is too big to fit on one DVD. Trash is empty; still no go. I do have a LaCie external firewire drive - can I just do a Save Project As... to the LaCie, or do I have to do something else? I'm just looking to save my movie project so I can get it off of my Mac and free up some hard drive space again.
Many thanks in advance!

Hi Gretchen, regarding the large size of your project, keep in mind that in iMovie HD, an original imported clip is retained in its entirety even if only a small segment is used in your final movie - called non-destructive editing. Only those imported clips not used AT ALL can actually be trashed. This makes for very large projects and potential storage issues, but has the advantage of being able to recover and re-work clips, even after Saving.

Archiving iMovie 7.1 on external drives

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