Can iMovie HD be kept on an external HD?

Hello,
I was told I shouldn't keep iPhoto on an external HD, but is it okay to keep iMovie (or iDVD) on an external HD?
Thanks!
Bruce

You need to keep all the iLife APPLICATIONS on your internal drive. You can keep the PROJECTS and FILES on external drives.
So, when you start an iMovie project, just specify its location on your external drive. You can create a folder there called 'My Movie' or something similar. Now, when you create a movie, iMovie will open (and store) its project files there. IF you already have an iMovie project on your internal drive, you can drag it over to the external where it will be copied, and then you can delete the one on your internal.
For iPhoto, you will need to drag/copy over your entire iPhoto folder. After it is finished copying, open iPhoto app while holding down the Option key. You will be asked if you want to create a new library or locate your library. You want iPhoto to LOCATE your library on the external drive, so choose that one, then select the iPhoto Library on your external drive. Once you see that iPhoto opens properly there, you can delete the one on your internal drive.
Remember, you have only moved your photo library, you have not created a backup. You might want to invest in another external drive for this, or back them up to CDs or DVDs. Have a look in the iPhoto discussions for more about this.
Same for your movies. I back mine up by saving my iDVD disk images for each movie and exporting my finished movies back to my camcorder and saving them to DV tapes.

Similar Messages

How can I export a project on an external drive in the latest version of iMovie?

Before the latest release of iMovie I easily managed to export a project on an external usb drive and re-import such project on a different Mac... In the latest iMovie version, however, I cannot see my drive any more..
So, how can I export a project on an external drive in the latest version of iMovie?
Thank you in advance

I'm not sure this is the best way, but you could create a new iMovie Library, move your project to that Library, then close the library. Then move the Library to your USB drive. Then, on the other Mac, in iMovie open the Library.

To save hard drive space, can I put my iMovie projects and clips on an external drive?

to save hard drive space, can I put my iMovie projects and clips on an external drive?

Yes.
To preserve your projects, all moves should be done from within iMovie, (not the Finder).
First, the external drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). FAT32 will not work. You can reformat using Disk Utility if you need to.
When importing video from your camera, you can specify your external drive as the target on the import screen.
For existing projects, you should move using these instructions.
http://help.apple.com/imovie/#move7d66613
There is an error in the instructions where it says to drag the project icon to the icon in the Event Library. You should instead look for your hard drive icon in the Project Library.
You can move events using these instructions.
http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6d42c
If you want to move Events, and copy photos, copy music, etc for editing on another Mac, you should use the FILE/CONSOLIDATE MEDIA feature after moving the Project as above.
http://help.apple.com/imovie/#mov3ac6c7c9

IMovie Hangs on startup if my external hard drive is switched on.

Hi guys & girls,
I'm new here and also new to Macs in general so be gentle!
I bought my system back in April and have been running iMovie '08 quite happily, using my external hard drive to store the iMovie events. Anyway, within the last week iMovie started to hang whenever I start it up - it just sits there with no change, even after half an hour so I end up having to 'force quit' it.
I re-installed iMovie from my OS X disks and it didn't make any difference, however I've noticed that if I copy the event I want to use across to my internal hard drive then switch off my external drive before launching iMovie then it works OK.
The only thing I can can think of that I've changed recently is that I installed Skype and also a demo version of 'iStopmotion', which has since expired. Could these have caused this to happen or is it likely to be a co-incidence?
My external hard drive is a 300GB Lacie d2 Quadra, using a USB connection as I wanted to keep the firewire port free for my camcorder. I currently have 106GB available on the external hard drive.
-james

Welcome kultofkylie to the  iMovie boards..
+re-installing is a habitual ritual on inferior systems+ ..
stop doing that on Unix based OS' as MacOsX.. it can 'confuse' the file structure..
there are other procedures to give an app a 'slapp on backhead' ..
to clear the fog..
external harddrive is formatted to MacOs/hfs?
did Skype install any 'codecs'? have a look in your /Library/Quicktime folder.. what plug-isn are listed there...? e.g. older perian.org plug.ins keep iM from working correctly..
did you copy your Event via Finder or within iM08?
did you try to trash the .plist?
sorry for long list of Qs, but you did a lot, you shouldn't..

I am over capacity and think it's because I have Downton Abbey Season 1 saved in iTunes. How can I move the episodes to an external hard drive?

I am over capacity on my #GS iPhone and I have a very large amount of audio space that I think might be taken up by season one of Downton Abbey. I have tried to copy and save episodes to my external hard drive but I get a message saying I "don't have permission". How can I move the six episodes out iTunes ??

dckramermd wrote:
How can I move software program over to an external hard drive to free up space on my imac. I have move documents and photos and movies but the only thing left is softward programs. How do you move them to the external drive?
EXTREMELY poor idea! Leave the apps on the internal HD. You can move files and libraries from iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Aperture, etc.. to an external HD but leave the apps them self on the internal HD.
Did you empty the Trash after moving all that data to the EHD??

I want to move imovie projects and events to an external hard drive. Where is the "move" command?

I want to move completed imovie projects and events to my external hard drive. I see in the "help" section that I should "move project & event" and they indicate that their should be such a selection. I highlight the project I want to move and attempt to drag it to my external HD but it won't stay. I never see "move project & event". I've tried holding the "command" key down while dragging and that doesn't work either. Help ...

Hi
Moving Event's and Project's
Connection - Either connect one Mac in Target mode to the other via FireWire. Or use an external hard disk !
(Target-Mode - Start one Mac e.g. laptop - BUT keep T-key down during full up-start - Now a FW-symbol is jumping around the screen and it will work as an external hard disk when connected to the other Mac)
A. The External Hard Disk - MUST BE - Mac OS Extended (hfs) formatted to work for Video. UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange works for most other things but not for Video whatever program is used (iMovie or FinalCut)
B. Should be a FireWire one as USB/USB2 performs badly to me and especially when filling up
C. Do never Move or Alter any folder named
• iMovie Event's - or -
• iMovie Project's
on DeskTop/Finder - as this will result in iMovie losing connections to them and repair can be anything from hard to impossibly
D. Moving and Copying must be done within iMovie application and Events to Events - and - Project's to Project's.
E. Moving Project's to Event's - Do not work for me - I have to export project as a QuickTime movie then Import this into Events.
Event's window can show two faces
Like this
or like this
from one hard disk Event - You can move it to the other hard disk
You can not (at least not me) move Event to Project or other way around only
Event to Event and Project to Project
Yours Bengt W

IMovie S-L-O-W on external hard drive

I have my iMovie events and projects on an external drive by necessity since my hard drive recently failed. Now when I start iMovie '08 it takes an eternity to finally finish starting iMovie. Can somebody offer me some help or suggestions?

Your Project files need to be on the internal drive for iMovie to see them. iMovie may be scanning your entire iPhoto library looking for movies, since it does not see any projects.
I would try moving both the Projects and Events back to your new internal drive.
At that point, see if it works.
If you need to move the event folders back to the external drive at that point, do it within iMovie.
I am assuming that you have replaced your hard drive and now have a working internal drive. If you are booting from a clone, the above advice does not apply, and we'll have to think some more.
By the way, congratulations on having a backup. Most people don't.

Can IMovie really do it?

I find something very interesting missing from the many postings here. Has anyone in fact imported HD footage and then edited in HD in IMovie? If so, please tell us about it. How long did it take? What was the differences when editing HD in IMovie vs DV footage? How about those Gee Three plug-ins. Did they work fine while editing in HD?
The bottom line.....Can IMovie really edit HD footage and produce a clean HD movie? Is Apple just hyping when they say you can editing in HD in IMovie?
Emac Mac OS X (10.3.7)

Yup; I edit HDV with iMovie HD (5 and now 6).
As Karl suggests, d'you really think it'd be called iMovie HD if it couldn't? ..And would the Sony man have jumped up on the stage with Steve J at MacWorld the other year to push the Sony FX1 camcorder if it couldn't?
..OK; I know iMovie 3 couldn't edit video properly, to start with ..but yes: you can edit HDV with iMovie HD. The results are beautiful.
There are, however, a few things to bear in mind:
1 - The faster your Mac, the faster iMovie will work with HDV footage. The Mac has to convert, on the fly, from the MPEG-2 format of HDV into the DV/QuickTime format which iMovie uses ..while you're importing. On my Mac mini and G4 PowerBooks that meant that importing the footage from the camcorder took twice or three times 'real time' to import ..sometimes 4x real time. So importing can be -s-l-o-w- ..That's why I eventually got a faster Mac, after checking out import speeds at the London Apple Store on their hardware. I bought the fastest Mac I could which was also a PowerPC. So I got a quad G5, with 4GB of RAM. This imports HDV in real time, so importing is exactly like importing normal DV. No faster, no slower: identical.
2 - Editing in HDV is exactly like editing in normal DV ..in fact it's the same as normal DV once it's imported and temporarily converted into Apple's Intermediate Codec format. Everything works just like normal: transitions, titles, importing pictures and sound, etc. Rendering titles and transitions, etc, took longer than normal DV on the G4 Mac mini and PowerBooks ..but that's not surprising, as every HDV frame has about 4x the information or detail in it. Rendering is back to the speeds of normal DV using the G5 quad.
3 - Outputting back to a camcorder is just like with normal DV ..except that it takes a LOT longer! ..The edited material has to be converted by the Mac from the temporary Apple Intermediate Codec format back into "Long-GOP MPEG-2" format to send to the camcorder ..and that took, on those G4 Macs, about 10x real time. So an hour of video had to be left overnight to Export back to a camcorder. On the G5 quad I've got that down to under 2x real time by (a) using a faster Mac, (b) keeping projects on a second internal disc, instead of on the main system disc or on a - slower - external FireWire disc, (c) using the fastest possible (10,000rpm) internal disc (..a 74GB Western Digital 'Raptor' ..there is a later, higher capacity - 150GB? - version, but that - reportedly - may presently have problems in a Mac, without a separate controller card to drive it). I intend to 'RAID' or to 'stripe' two of these WDs together, when the appropriate controller card arrives, to give what promises to be even faster disc access, and that may cut the export time even further, to perhaps around 1.5x real time.
I haven't yet used GeeThree plug-ins with HD footage: I tend to be rather conservative with my transitions, and just use simple things - usually - like cross dissolves, Fade In and Fade Out and - especially - Wash In and Wash Out. GeeThree (see their site) could probably give you more info about their plug-ins for HDV.
iMovie 6 originally gave very badly jerking PAL DV output to camcorders, as if it was sending NTSC 30fps video instead of PAL 25fps. Matti pointed this up, and the 6.0.1 update was very quickly posted, and has fixed that problem. (If you only use American-style NTSC video, you probably wouldn't have noticed this oddity.)
"..Can IMovie really edit HD footage and produce a clean HD movie?.." Yes, absolutely. I haven't got round to exporting any as QuickTime H.264 and putting it up on the web, but I shall eventually (..sometimes I have other things to do besides fiddling with video..!) and then you'll see - roughly - what it looks like.
"..Is Apple just hyping when they say you can editing in HD in IMovie?.." No. They're absolutely correct. But you do need a fast Mac to make the most of it, so that importing, rendering and - especially - exporting don't take t-o-o -l-o-n-g-

Is it better to store iMovies, iPhoto or iTunes on an external drive? I'm running out of space.

Is it better to store iMovies, iPhoto or iTunes on an external drive? I'm running out of space.

Movies for obvious reasons. Photo libraries can get extra large too. When that happens, you have to decide if all your metadata is worth losing, or if you want to keep the entire Pictures folder on a couple external hard drives on their own. Remember, you should never have less than two copies of your data at all times (meaning just before erasing anything, you'll have at least three temporarily). You can always switch the active library with an iPhoto rebuild. command-option keys held down when you startup iPhoto. That lets you pick the Library XML file in the Pictures folder in question out of the Users folder.

Can I install a program on an External Hard Drive?

I have an 500 GB external hard drive that I attach to my MBP to store movies and my aperture picture libraries. When I first got it, I created three Mac OS Extended (journaled) partitions, one for movies, one for pictures and the other one for “extras”. I’d like to install Adobe Photoshop on my external hard drive, so I’d like to know if there is a way to make any one of my three partitions operate as if they were a system partition. Can I install an application in an external hard drive? Can I run an application from an external hard drive? Which formatting solution could help me achieve what I want? Is this even possible? Any suggestions?

There are many applications that are happy to be installed on a partition other than the boot partition. However, if the Adobe Photoshop installer does no present you with that option I wouldn't. You could always copy it across post-installation to see if it will work. Updating my present issues.

Can I back up iphone to an external disk?

can I back up iphone to an external disk?

You can move your /Home/Music/iTunes folder to the external drive. Then hold down the OPTION key while starting iTunes. In the file dialog locate the /Music/iTunes/ folder on the external drive and click on the Open button. iTunes will now use the library on the external drive. When you sync your data and backups will now be saved on the external drive.

I dropped my macbook pro and the screen is broken can i still use it with an external monitor? Or can I or how do I transfer hard drive files to my mac mini?

I dropped my 17" macbook pro and the screen is broken. Can I still use it with an external monitor? When I plugged it into a monitor I had used it with before, I'm not able to see anything on the macbook screen to control it. It came on but I just got the blue screen with nothing else after typing in my password. (Didn't see the password form just assumed it was there somewhere and it did go from space to blue screen but no desktop icons, files, dock strip at top or anything else, just blank blue screen) so I can't access the system preferences.
Or can I / or how do I, transfer hard drive files to my mac mini? If not salvageable as is can I pull out the hard drive and make it an external harddrive? In otherwords is anything salvageable? It seems it's coming on I just can't access anything. BTW I was told it would cost aprox $1000 to replace the screen! I paid almost $4000 for this thing and it was running great - makes me sick to lose it!

I'd like to promise you that everything will be fine if you just get the monitor going - but it's hard to know what the hardware damage might be. It might be the monitor, or the damage might be greater.
Your best solution would be visit your local Apple Store and let them know what your situation is. They have access to diagnostics you don't, and they might be able to the best way to save your data and keep you computing. It's still not covered, but they can tell you what your current options are.
Um, you might consider investing in a backup drive.
And there other repair options, too. Powerbook Medic http://www.powerbookmedic.com/xcart1/pages.php?pageid=67 offers reliable repairs, and quotes prices well under Apple's.

I have my iMovies in QuickTime format on an external drive. Is there anyway to show them from the external drive without putting them into iTunes?

I havei my personal iMovies in QuickTime format on an external drive. I prefer not to have to import them into my iTunes library which is nearly 1GB already. Is there any way to play them from my MacBook Pro through Apple TV 2 without importing them into iTunes?

Just wanted to add a little to the excellent comments from those above... I have debated on adding the content to iTunes or just accessing the content through some folder structure.
What has worked best for me and my family:
use VideoDrive - http://www.aroona.net/VideoDrive/Home.html to import the videos/tvshows into iTunes and make them in the correct format for my iPad/iPhone/AppleTV devices in the house. This software is cheap and excellent and make the adding of content to iTunes (i everything) easy!
I store my videos on a usb 2tb drive and my tvshows on a different usb 2tb drive. And I swap a drive out every year or so and give old drive away to family/friends. That way my media drives are new(ish) and 1 drive is never older than 2 years.
for media that I don't want to add to iTunes I still use AirVideo as it is an excellent piece of software. I also use AirVideo to allow me to access content on my home network over the internet.
my "media server" is a simple 4 year old intel mac mini with 1 gig of ram best $700 I spent when I first flipped to all things mac. Family now have 2 mbp's, 2 iPads, 4 iphones and 1atv (2nd gen)
I'm working on a document that shows how I did my setup - if you want to read more please feel free to download my preview - https://files.me.com/lee.gaupp/aq0gst
Would enjoy feedback

Can I put my library on an external hard drive and use it between two computers?

Can I put my library on an external hard drive and use it between two computers? I have two MBP; I will refer to one as computer A and to the other as computer B. I would like to be able to plug in my external hard drive, boot up iTunes, and if there were any changes made to the library previous to its last time accessed on this compluter, they show up on that computer, regardless of being imported on the other.
A hypothetical example: I import three albums called 1, 2, and 3 on computer A over a week or so. I take the external hard drive and plug it into computer B. The entire library which was visible on A, is visible on B, including albums 1, 2, and 3.
Is this possible? If so, what files need to be copied onto the external? I'm trying some different combinations, trial and error basically. Hopefully someone knows and can answer before I mess up my library. I also want to do this to free up space on my computer. All importing will be done from disc.

iTunes/Preferences/Advanced : point your iTunes to the new location of the Library.
Set "Share on local network" in the Sharing tab, and you or everyone on the local network can play your music.
You make a backup first of the Library.
Move the follwing to the new location:
/Users/your username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music
have fun.

HT4859 How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?

How do I back up my documents from my Macbook on iCloud? or can I only use time machine or external HD?
I think I have missed something in trying to read all of the pages on apple site about icloud.

Welcome to the Apple Community.
You can't back up a computer to iCloud.
You can use any back up software, you should always back up to a different drive.

Can iMovie HD be kept on an external HD?

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