Imovie crashed - how do I recover data

Question

I was editing a project that included voice recordings thru the computer microphone and adding titles to describe the audio. My imovie program crashed/unexpectedly quit. When I restarted imovie ALL the data was lost. It looks like a brand new project. How can I recover the data? The originals have been destroyed.

Answer 1

Welcome to the discussion, Billishere. I wish there were more pleasant circumstances.
1. Look inside the Media folder of the project folder. There may still be media files there — video clips, songs, voiceovers. They may not show up in the project timeline, but they might still be there.
2. Look too for the project.mov file inside the project folder. This is a special type of QuickTime movie, called a reference movie, with no video or audio of its own, just pointers to files in the Media folder. It is called "Your Project Name.mov". Double-click on it to open in QuickTime Player. If the movie refuses to play, media files are missing. If the movie plays okay from start to finish, the media files are still intact.
If the project was saved just before the crash, the movie should be up-to-date. You can import the movie into a NEW iMovie project to deliver the contents of the old project to the new. Everything will arrive as a single clip, but everything will be there and play in the proper order.
If the project hadn't been saved in a long time, the movie may not help much. Each time we save, this movie is updated.
3. Or, you may be able to simply drag items from the Media folder of the project to the timeline of a NEW project.
One of two things might have happened:
1. If you imported video/audio but hadn't saved the project before the crash, that editing would be lost. The editing wouldn't have been saved to the iMovie project file, so iMovie wouldn't recognize the clips in the Media folder. iMovie would ask you about clips it didn't recognized when the project reopened.
In that case, the Media files might still be there. They won't be there, however, if you told iMovie to discard them, or if you've saved the project subsequent to the crash.
2. iMovie 4 (and earlier versions) were subject to several types of corruption. Although rare, one was complete destruction of the contents of the project file (the file where clip descriptions are stored) and worse, the trashing of all files in the Media folder. In both those cases, no recovery is possible. The stuff was simply gone.
As you describe the problem, either is possible. If the Media folder is essentially empty, profound corruption may have occurred. If, however, the Media folder contains lots of stuff or the QuickTime movie plays okay you may be able to rescue items.
CAUTION: At this point, do not save changes to the project. Doing so may cause iMovie to discard additional files it believes the project no longer needs
Good luck.
Karl