IMovie & External Hard Drive
I bought a new iMac a couple months ago. It took me about a month to fill its hard drive with video. I recently purchased an external hard drive & Leopard. There was not enough room on the iMac hard drive to install Leopard so I just took one folder out of my iMovie events and drug it to the external drive. I didn't actually do it in iMovie like I read I should. My problem is I have an iMovie project connected to that file that I am not able to do anything with now. It shows a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark on the clips in the Project Library. The external shows up in iMovie but it doesn't show any video on the drive.
NONE of my movies/DVD's that I created in iLife 08 will open! I purchased Leopard & wanted to install it on my main hard drive, but there was not enough space to install it, so I connected my external hard drive and called AppleCare. I followed the exact instructions of the AppleCare representative to move my home file (containing all of my movie projects, photos, music & iDVD's) to my external hard drive. All of the files copied & showed up on my external hard drive, so the AppleCare rep told me to move these files from my original hard drive to the trash & empty the trash. I did that. I installed Leopard using the "archive & install" option. Now all my movies & DVD's that I created with iLife 08 show up as icons but WILL NOT OPEN. I have spent 2 full days trying to rectify this disaster (much of the time on hold). The AppleCare representatives who tried to help me have been very nice and have tried a several options, none of which worked. Three that I remember are Dave (who helped me move my home file to my external hard drive) and Tanner & Kyle, who both tried to get my movie/DVD files to open. I spoke to a couple others. My case # is 89078742. The AppleCare reps say they are out of options. They say that everything copied. The files are there. They just cannot be opened. This is unbelievable because 1 1/2 years of work is lost! I am not willing to give up. Can someone PLEASE help!!!
Similar Messages
-
I have been storing my Aperture and IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive that recently died. Fortunately I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 2nd external drive. How do I restore my libraries to a new external hard drive?
This is a tricky one.
Open up Time Machine and go back to a date using the timeline on the right side of the window when you know the drive was working and was backing up as part of Time Machine backups.
Click on the name of your Mac under the Devices heading on the left side of the window in Time Machine, and if things are working correctly you will see Macintosh HD (or whatever you have named it) and the name of the external hard drive that was backing up in the past.
Right-Click on the name of the external hard drive and then click on "Restore (name of drive) to....." You may be asked for your adminstrator password at this point.
It might be easier to restore the drive contents to your desktop if you have room on your Mac, and then copy things over to the new external drive where you want to store the Aperture and iMovie Libraries.
Once the libraries have been moved over the new external hard drive, you will likely need to "point" Aperture and iMovie to the location of the libraries on the new external hard drive. -
I had all of my video files that I work on in iMovie saved to an external hard drive exclusively to save space on my Macbook. The other day I had just finalized a project and went to work on another one and when I opened the project I could see what should have been there, but scrolling over the entire clip I would only see black and that the file was missing. I did not drag anything on the hard drive to the trash or move anything. How can I get those files? These are videos of my kids and I am devastated and willing to try anything!
Control click does not work - no option to find files. I have no idea what to do. When I look at the usage of the external drive the space is being used, but I cannot find the files. I am going to try MacKeeper's Undelete and see if I can make any progress with it.
-
Using iMovie to save project files to external hard drive?
I have a MacBook Pro with very limited space on the internal hard disk drive. I also have a few FireWire external hard drives.
A friend recently gave me his Hitachi DZ-HS300A mini-DVD camcorder so I could copy footage off of it, load it into my machine, edit it and upload it (several minutes) to YouTube. He can't do this because he lives in a remote area where there is no broadband yet.
I almost never use iMovie. I was wondering if there is a way to save the project file to an external FireWire drive so that there will be no large video files clogging up my laptop's internal hard drive. Can this be done? Is there an iMove preference I have to change?You should generally leave the iMovie Project file on the boot drive. The Project File is mainly a small text file with in and out points.
The iMovie Event file is where the video assets are stored. You can store events to an external hard drive in two ways:
1) As you import from the camera, you will see an import screen. You can select the external drive on the import screen
2) If the event is already on your internal drive, you can click View/Events By Volume. Now you can drag and drop the event to the external drive in the Events SOurce List in iMovie.
For your external drive to be visible to iMovie, it must be formatted HFS+ or HFS+ (journalled). -
My external hard drive will not show up in iMovie 10.0.4. How do I copy my movies into it?
My Mac OSX 10.9.4 has both iMovie 10 and iMovie 9. I've started uploading all of my videos from my camera to iMovie 10 and have not worried about my external hard drive. Now it's been a couple months of putting those videos onto iMovie 10 and I just connected my external hard drive and it doesn't show up in sidebar anywhere. Is this new to iMovie 10? How can I copy my events and projects to my external hard drive from imovie 10?
If iMovie 10 is the issue, I will gladly begin using iMovie 9 again, but will need those events to get into iMovie 9. Is there anyway to move movies in iMovie 10 to iMovie 9.
Thanks for the help!Hi bwright22,
Welcome to Apple Support Communities.
It sounds like you want to copy videos to and from an external hard disk in iMovie. Take a look at the article linked below, I believe it has the information that you're looking for.
iMovie (2013): Work with multiple libraries
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH14745
Show or hide the Libraries list
You select libraries and events in the Libraries list.
To show the Libraries list: Click the Show button on the left side of the toolbar.
To hide the Libraries list: Click the Hide button on the left side of the toolbar.
You can also choose Window > Hide Libraries (or press Shift-Command-1).
Copy or move projects, events, or clips between libraries or hard disks
Connect a hard disk that contains the target library to your computer, or copy the target library to your computer.
Choose File > Open Library, and choose an option from the submenu.
You can choose from recently opened libraries at the top of the submenu, locate an existing library on your computer, or create a new library.
The selected library is opened in the Libraries list, with the first event selected and its contents displayed in the browser.
In the Libraries list, select the event that contains the item you want to move or copy.
In the browser, select the item you want to move or copy.
Note: To select multiple items, hold down the Command key as you click the items you want to select, or drag a selection rectangle around the items.
Do one of the following:
To move items between events or libraries: Drag the clip or project to another event or library.
To copy items between events or libraries: Option-drag the clip or project to another event or library by first starting to drag and then holding down the Option key as you drag.
I hope this helps.
-Jason -
Importing clips to imovie hd from external hard drive
Ok it all started when i wanted to put an hour long clip into imovie HD. I had 54gb left on my computer and just before it finished it told me i did not have enough space on my startup disk.
so read forums and people said delete so i took other clips which i still want to edit, put them on to an external HD. that freed up a good 60gb more, so now with 115gb, it still did not work. if you can help that would be sweet
Secondary and MORE importantly, i went to transfer my clips from my external hard drive to Imovie HD. It came up with imovie could not parse it - 36. any ideas.
so then what i tried to do is to transfer it back to my internal hard drive, it came up with something about the movie having an atom. then it came up with Movie is not a movie file
now it comes up with clip in use. i am confused has ****
the other thing is it is not all my clips that are giving trouble but a lot are.
PLEASE it is massive project that has to be finished and burned by friday
thank youthanks for the reply
my drive is formatted correctly and i have transferred through this exact hard drive before with no problems
It just so happens the one time i dont have 2 copied of my work is the time is messes up
I phoned Apple, they believe it is my codecs but some of my clip and have been pixailized and damaged now. does anyone have a sweet program that can convert my clips -
IMovie and external hard drive: follow up question
This is a follow up question from the iMovie 6 forum. Hopefully, this question will help the poster on that forum as well. I, too, am working on multiple iMovie 5.0.2 projects at the same time and am running out of hard disk space. I would like to transfer remaining miniDV tape to an external hard drive and, when finished, transfer these clips from the external hard drive to the current iMovie project in my Powerbook, one project at a time. Is this possible ? Will I transfer files from the external hard drive to the Powerbook hard drive and then to iMovie, or directly from the external hard drive to iMovie ? Do I have to format the external drive to Mac OS Extended as advised in iMovie 6 forum in order to transfer miniDV tape to the external hard drive ? When pressing the erase tab to format the external hard drive, will this erase files already on the hard drive before formatting ? Can I transfer projects I am not working on from iMovie to the external hard drive and then transfer them back to the Powerbook when it is time to work on them ? Sorry about all the questions but I need to think very simple-minded when it comes to computer related issues. Thanks for your help.
I was able to use and store iMovie in the external hard drive using my Powerbook as a monitor, so I presume it is formatted correctly
Sorry, but you cannot assume the drive is formatted correctly. iMovie doesn't tell you the drive format is incompatible with iMovie. (it should, but it doesn't.) Some iMovie project features can be saved and some cannot.
It's easy to check the disk format. In the Finder, click on the drive icon and choose File > Get Info from the Finder menubar. The window that opens shows the disk Format. You want it to say "Mac OS Extended". "(Journaled)" is optional.
With some drives, sometimes even that can be wrong. To be sure, use Disk Utility to check the format. When you click on the drive in the list along the left side of the Disk Utility window, the format is displayed at the bottom of the window.
Always, always, always check the disk format before using a drive with iMovie.
Karl -
I have filled my hard drive, half with music, half with photos. I want to take my music off, and put it onto an external hard drive. However, I would still like to have access to favourite songs and playlists when the external hard drive isn't plugged in. I would also like to access this music to use with iMovie. Is there a way to do this?
You will have to engage a split library which means you will have to start answering questions on this forum because you will need to learn a lot about how iTunes works in order not that have a big mess at the end of it all. It also won't be easy when the time comes to relocate it all to different drives.
You can go to advanced preferences and turn off organize media and copy to items to media folder when adding items to library. Next read about how to selectively consolidate items to the external drive.
Sept. 2010, Consolidate selected content - https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2589812 and April 2014, https://discussions.apple.com/message/25414357
"...selected the new tracks directly in iTunes, Control-clicked on the selection, and saw that now you can consolidate selected items." - http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20090919000326840
Remember that when you start iTunes without the external drive turned on iTunes will present you with a bunch of broken links. If you have automatic downloads enabled with iCloud you may have to turn that off to prevent iTunes from repopulating your drive trying to deal with those "missing" tracks.
If you add tracks in bunches to iTunes and want them to go to different media folders you will need to either add them by holding down the option key while dragging if the desired media folder is not the one set in preferences, or by changing the media folder in preferences. Changing media folder preferences only applies to new files added, not old ones.
Okay, I am going to stop typing because you might just reply to me, "Oh, okay, forget it," and I don't need the exercise.
What are the iTunes library files? - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1660
More on iTunes library files and what they do - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes#Media_management
What are all those iTunes files? - http://www.macworld.com/article/139974/2009/04/itunes_files.html
Where are my iTunes files located? - http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1391 -
IMovie Project from External Hard Drive not Opening?
Please help!!
Fairly new to MACs, iMovie and iDVD, I didn't have a clear understanding of how saving iMovie projects worked. Reading various tutorials, I thought I had a clear understanding of how they work. Apparently not with my recent frustration with iMovie.
I created several iMovie Projects but needed more space in order to make more projects for my internship thus I did what I thought was common sense -- get an external hard drive.
I exported iMovie projects into my user account and from there, dragged the saved projects into an external hard drive and then deleted the iMovie projects from my user account.
However, when I needed to retrieve these projects, I simply turned on my hard drive and clicked on them to open. However, whenever I tried opening them, they wouldn't open. Is it because I didn't export them to the hard drive in the first place?
What I don't understand is why iMovie is not opening or recognizing the saved iMovie projects from the external hard drive when the size and kind clearly indicate that it should open with iMovie automatically.
What is the proper way of saving my iMovie projects and events so that I can always have access to whenever I need to open up an old project or simply edit?Freeing up space on your Mac hard drive in iMovies ’08.
The application iMovie ‘08 has two main libraries displayed in the iMovie window: Events and Projects. Events are the main imports from your video camera, say. These files are big and you have the option to save them on an external hard drive and so iMovie knows to find them there. Projects are your editing instructions like what clips you want and where. The files are small and you save them on your Mac hard drive. They are NOT the clips only signposts where to find them (in Events on your external hard drive). You can move Projects to your external hard drive as back-up but iMovie will not find them there. If you then delete Projects from your Mac, iMovie can no longer make use of them unless you manually export them back into iMovie from your external hard drive. See Apple Article HT1026 iMovie '08: Moving iMovie footage to another drive (http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1026). Here the external hard disk is used for moving Projects from one computer to another and, by implication, back to the source computer.
Sharing the projects to iTunes for syncing with Apple TV creates (publishes) movies that take up the same amount of space on your Mac as the source Projects. You can still burn DVDs in iDVD using the iTunes Movies as your Media so provided you have iMovie Projects backed up on your external hard drive you can delete them from your Mac and just use the iTunes Movies (for Apple TV and iDVD). In addition, publishing iMovie Projects in iTunes for syncing to Apple TV results in these files being duplicated in both Movies/iMovies Sharing/iTunes AND in iTunes/iTunes Music/Movies so delete them from here and get even more GBs back! Tell iTunes in Advanced not to save these iTunes published movies anymore in order to stop further duplication ocurring. -
I have an IMAC and I'm running OSX 10.9.2. I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive. In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives. Is this possible? Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
I'd like to store my Aperture /IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive.
That is fine and recommended.. use the fastest disk you can afford.. ie Thunderbolt>USB3>FW800>USB2.
In addition, I'd like to partition the external hard drive so that Time Machine can use it to both back up my IMac and the external library drives.
Let me be clear.. you want to partition the one disk.. use it for TM and move your files to the external disk.. and then backup to the same disk.. You can do it.. but that is not a backup.. that is an experiment in how long you can get away with running files and backups on the same disk before you lose everything.. like Russian Roulette.. pull the trigger enough times and laws of probability will do you in.
You must have backups on a different disk .. otherwise it is pointless.
Can I set up a RAID 5 format for redundancy?
No.. you can buy special USB and Thunderbolt external drives that support RAID..
BUT that is still not a backup.. let me show why.. you make a silly move and corrupt your file in aperture.. it is not that rare.
Raid will corrupt all copies of the files.. it is replicated across all disks.
Delete a photo it is deleted across all disks.. you have no recovery.
Alway, always consider RAID system one disk.. backup onto another disk.. and if the photos or movies are at all important to you.. ie your family .. make another copy and store in a relatives house.. There is no such thing as too much redundancy. -
I have copied videos onto an external hard drive. to free memory on my macbook. When I try to delete these I am woarned that I will not be able to use this video in existing projects
How do I point iMovie to events in my external hard drive so I can play projects which use them?
MacBook, iMovie 9.0.4Hi
You can do this - by not doing it the way You describe as it will not work.
a. the external hard disk - MUST BE - Mac OS extended (hfs) formatted -
UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange - will work for most things - BUT NOT FOR VIDEO (iMovie, iDVD or FinalCut doesn't matter)
b. Do not alter or move any folder named
• iMovie Event's - or -
• iMovie Project's
on DeskTop/Finder - at all
All moving's of Events and Projects must be done within the iMovie Application - then connections will not break.
(move them back and see if iMovie remembers them - then do move as described above)
Yours Bengt W -
I try to export my Imovie and I always get the error code"Unable to prepare project for publishing...File already open with write permission" it even does it when I am just trying to export to my external hard drive to save the file
Thanks!!! I had same error (with -49) and the mac had an external hard drive attached.. and it was doing a backup. Stopped, disconnected and the project exported!
-
How in the world do I transfer iMovie events from my event library into my external hard drive? There is no option for that. Even when I select "copy" an event, and then go to the external drive and want to paste it, there is no paste option.
The only time I can transfer footage from the laptop to the backup drive is if I drag and drop an imovie PROJECT file, and along with it click on "copy projects and events"
But most of my events are not projects, and I just want to move my event videos off the computer.
I feel like it shouldn't be this hard and frustrating to figure out.See: http://help.apple.com/imovie/#move7d66613
Geoff. -
Using an external hard drive with imovie?
Hello,
I recently converted a lot of old tapes to a digital format and they are on an external hard drive. I have been copying them onto my internal hard drive but I am now running out of space. I looked for some help and found I can actually view events from the hard drive or so I thought. In the event library I can see my external hard drive (but none of the files) and when I select it I get the message - to view video select one or more events in the event library on the left - to add video to your library. I was hoping I could just see the files on the external hard drive. What am I missing?
ThanksThe external drive must be formatted as Mac OS Extended (journaled). I would assume yours already is, because you see it in iMovie.
Next, when you import from a camera, you can set the external drive as the target on the import screen.
Also, when you use FILE/IMPORT to import a movie, you can specify the external drive.
For Event already in iMovie, you can click VIEW/EVENTS BY DISK. You can now hold down the command key while dragging the small icon for the event to the small icon for the drive in the Event Library List.
Finally one more option, using the Finder, you can also create a folder called iMovie Events at the top level of the external drive. You can add folders within the iMovie Events folder. The folder name will become the Event name. Drag your movies into these folders. The next time you start iMovie, it will generate thumbnails and you can see these events in iMovie. -
Saving iMovie 4 projects on an external hard drive
I'm starting the ambitious project of copying our family videos from 8mm tapes to iMovie to eventually making DVDs. since I don't have much disk space on my iBook, my plan is to put the iMovie files on an external hard drive & work from there. Here are the system specs:
Camera: Sony DCR-TRV520 (Digital 8)
Computer: iBook 800 MHz PowerPC G3, 28GB hard drive, 5GB available
OS 10.3.9
iMovie 4
Hard Drive: LaCie Eternet Disk mini 300GB (150GB available) format: Mac OS Extended
Problem: Open a new iMovie project on the external hard drive. Start to import the footage. After one or 2 seconds, the image freezes and import aborts.
Solution: Open a new project on the computer. Footage imports fine.
Problem: Can only import 1/2 hour or so of video before I'm in trouble. Files WAY too big for my itty bitty iBook!
Solution: Make a new iMovie file on the external hard drive & copy the clips from the computer to the hard drive. (this takes TONS of time!)
Problem: Open movie file on the LaCie. Import the clips. Clips show up but won't play!
Question: Is there any better way to do this? Why won't the project work on the external hard drive?
I teach video production at a high school and have done this many times on newer iMacs (iLife 6). We can't save every project on the computers, so certain projects I'll copy to an external hard drive. I've never had a problem working on an iMovie project from the hard drive. I considered uploading my movies on the computers at school, however then I'm stuck with iMovie 6 files on the hard drive and iMovie 4 at home.
Any suggestions -- other than get a newer computer?Importing new footage from a video camera and working with iMovie with footage already on the computer are two completely different things.
At school, do you actually IMPORT video from digital camcorders directly to the USB drive as you said you were doing at home?
Because while you can indeed work on iMovie projects off a USB drive if you are not actually importing video, the whole importing process from a Firewire camcorder is sort of a streaming video type transfer and Firewire is used because it has a mode for this type of transfer. USB, on the other hand, can not import video from a camcorder straight to a USB drive reliably because there is way too much CPU overhead associated with USB transfers and it therefore can not keep up with the "streaming" video coming out of the camcorder.
If you want to find out more details, do a search for "isochronous" with Firewire. Firewire uses type types of transfers. Asynchronous transfer which is like USB uses where you transfer data, wait for the CPU to respond, then transfer the next chunk of data. Video transfer uses and isochronous process where, to put it very simply, the camcorder starts spitting out chunks of footage with a checksum and the receiving end receives it, calculates a checksum and if the checksums match, stores the chunk of data. If they don't match, the data is discarded and it starts to receive the next chunk of data. There is no ability to resend failed data so you get dropped frames in your footage.
If you import via Firewire from Camcorder to Mac then directly to an external USB drive, the transfer from Mac to USB drive will be too slow as the CPU and drive have to start doing their "did you get it?", "Ya I got it, send another/No, send again please", "OK here it comes" routine while in the meantime the camcorder to Mac Firewire transfer is just pumping out data at a fixed rate. Once the USB connection falls behind the process aborts.
Patrick
Maybe you are looking for
-
NEF Files Do Not Show up in Lightroom.
Hello, I bought a new Nikon D750 yesterday and my raw files do not show up in Adobe Lightroom. The do show up in Photoshop and Bridge. I have creative cloud and it says it is "up to date" Does anyone know how I can get Lightroom to open the files?
-
Hello guys! I got a problem while trying to upload A/R Credit Memos through Data Transfer Workbench. It shows an error message inthe DTW Error Log: "Cannot add invoice with zero total and deferred tax http://ORIN.DocTotalApplication-Defined or Object
-
Several weeks ago Firefox suddenly was / is very slow to load all pages. I launch Firefox. Wait. Launch Safari. Safari loads page while I am still waiting for Firefox. Why?
-
hi.. to alll..... I dnt know how it happened but it is very surprising for me.... 2 hrs before i checked my phone it was working... i put it on my bed and after that it switched OFF.... n from then i ws trwying to ON the phone but its not working....
-
Parse a timestamp MS SQL column so that flex would understand
How would I parse a timestamp MS SQL column so that flex would understand when I send it to the client? Query is written in Cold Fusion.