IMovie file is to long

Hi people
Have a 3hr HD file of a Sony Handycam which i am editing in imovie i keep getting a error when i am exporting or saving it that the actual content is too long.
So what i would like to ask is- if imovie can not handle 3hrs of video what should i use, and what is the best way to burn the content i have to a bluray disc.
Thanks in advance

Another question you may know.
I saved my iPhoto library before upgrading on my external hard drive BUT when I tried to reopen the iPhoto library, all my photos came up with blank.
I have tried to rebuild my database & also have downloaded 'iPhoto Library Manager' but still I cannot see my photos. It say's that they are there (11,000+ photos). I also understand that the reason the ! shows up is the connection between photo files are missing. Do you know how I can solve this?

Similar Messages

I moved my iMovie file to the desktop. Now I can't open it and it is no longer in iMovie either. Anyway to retrieve it?

My iMovie file was dragged to the desktop, so i could access it easier and when i try to open it or move it nothing happens. the movie is also no longer in iMovie

Hi,
From the iMovie menu bar click File > Open Library > iMovie Library
If that doesn't help, click File > Open > Other. You should see a dialog box. Click Locate then navigatre to the iMovie file on your Desktop then click Open.

My Project files are no longer viewable on imovie 11

I can still see events and I can still find the actual project files in finder

Additional checks show that I can see Project Files as normal if I log in as different user on the iMac.
The iMovie files (Events and Projects) are stored on an external drive that is connected directly to the iMac.
On the Main account, the external drive does not show up under the Project Library.

Advice needed for network storage for iMovie files

Hi
I'm after some advice as to what a good solution for a school is to store iMovie files. I don't have a lot of Mac experience, however do manage the schools PC network and have a pretty good understanding of the general issues.
The schools media suite has 7 Macs (3 reasonable G5's). Because some units are better than others they don't want to assign students to certains PCs (which could allow them to work with files locally).
To date they have been storing all the iMovie files on a old G4 server, however this is running out of space and we want to provide a longer term solution for them.
When I say storing the "movie files" I mean the whole iMovie project -- the project file and all the audio and video clips. These are all stored on the network so the students can open them from any mac. Which has been working (more or less) ok from the old G4 just the disk space is the big issue.
We have tried using a Lacie Raid NAS device for the movie files but this had problems with the Mac extended character set in file names and wouldn't always open or allow saves to the device.
We have also tried using the Netgear ReadyNAS NV+ (using raid) which supports AFP and OS X and seems to work ok and faster in general than the Lacie device. However playback from the Netgear causes the video/audio playback to stop and start. I'm not sure this is the same stutter issue that has been discussed here since if I copy the iMovie file to the local disk it will play back ok. It appears to an issue of bandwidth. The Macs are all 100Mb, the Netgear is 1Gb, which is connected to a Dlink 1Gb switch.
Mostly the students movies are quite short (3-5min) but the project files have lots of clips and range in size from a few Gig to up to around 8Gb.
I can't figure how an old slow G4 can out perform a new 1Gb NAS Raid device.
They are using iMovie06, would upgrading to 08 help?
Any advice would be most appreciated.
Thanks,
Simon

simondg wrote:
... They are using iMovie06, would upgrading to 08 help?
welcome Simon to the  boards ...
definitely NOT.. iM08 has a very different file management concerning projects.. it offers a Library of ALL (=tons of gigs) imports ever ('Events'), and keeps Projects and Events in different locations; to delocate those makes the use of socalled SymLinks neccessairy...
plus, iM08 has high demands on the grafic-card of a Mac, so read the specs carefully before investing...
iMHD6 is a bit 'iffy' concerning drive's format.. as long as you're using 'MacOsFormatted' drives, easy does it ..
so, why not buying an external, firewire-connected housing for 3-4 standard (=cheap) ATA-drives, each 500GB (=cheap), connect that to goo' ol' reliable G4 and done?

Why Does idvd take my 26.2gb imovie file and compress it so small?

Please help. I've created a 17+ minute long imovie file that is 26.2gb. When I view the file information in idvd it says that it's only 0.6gb.
I've already burned a test copy and it looked way too compressed. Like a bad jpg file. From idvd, I burned 'best quality' to a disc image and toasted it. I know that idvd decides who to do the compression in some complex way, but is there another method to not have so much compression?
Thanks...

Robert,
DV (as normally exported from iMovie to iDVD) runs
about 13 GB per hour. You say your content is 17
minutes and 26.GB - what CODEC did you use?
DVDs are in MPG-2 compressed format. In Best Quality
mode iDVD will take 120 minutes of DV content and
compress it to about 4 GB. So 17 minutes of content
could be about .6 GB.
F Shippey
Thanks for your reply. I didn't pick a codec. I just clicked create idvd from imovie and it did it for me. I've made at least 10 other dvds and haven't seen this much loss of quality before. I'm just not sure why...
0.6 was project size and I guess your math is right, but I've very disappointed with quality.
Thanks,
Bob

Deleting iMovie files & exported movies causes errors in all of iLife

I just went through quite an ordeal...
In an attempt to clean up some space, I deleted a bunch of my iMovie project files and movies after backing them up (files in the default Movies folder). I have deleted iMovie projects before with no issues.
This time, it caused errors in iDVD, iMovie, and iPhoto...it would say: "Connection failed. The server may not exist or it is not operational at this time. Check the server name or IP address and try again." It would say this over and over and over again and often completely hang up my application so that I would have to force quit. This would repeat itself over and over...
I read about this in other forums and erased .plist files in User > Library, etc...This solved the problem for other people, but it kind of made it worse for me. Long story short, I ended up having to restore from Time Machine my entire system just to get iLife working again... I also searched for Aliases and externally referenced libraries or files, and I do not have any.
So now I have those files again. I want to delete them again. But I'm afraid! (P.S. This may also be related to deleting the Aperture Trial Library in the Photos folder...I am also posting about that to the Aperture forum.)
Does anyone know what the deal with this is? How come before I did not have problems but am now? How do I safely delete iMovie files without having this happen again?
THANK YOU!

iMovie is a non-destructive editor, meaning that all original clips are maintained in the folder, even after editing. Until you render the movie to DVD, all the original files are still "in the background". Kind of hard for me to explain. Others here could give more technical details. You would have to delete your movie from the folder to regain all the hard drive space.
If your idea is to archive your movies, a better method is to record them back to tape. Otherwise, get an external drive to store the finished movies and then delete the original files.
One word of caution about emptying the iMovie trash. This has been known to cause problems with a work in progress and it is generally advised to leave the iMovie trash alone until your project is finished and burned to a DVD.

Deleting imovie files after export

Can I delete my imovie folders for movies that i have finished and exported to a .mov file? The folders with the original imovie files are huge (17 gig on average) and I need the drive space. To make dvd's in the future do I only need the idvd project file and the exported .mov?
thanks,
Craig

Welcome to the forum, Craig.
To make dvd's in the future do I only need the idvd project file and the exported .mov?
To edit a DVD later you need 1) the iDVD project file and 2) the source movie you originally included on that DVD.
If you exported the iMovie project to a movie for iDVD, you don't need to keep the iMovie project any longer. You need to keep it only if you haven't exported the project to a movie for iDVD. If you still have the movie, it's okay to trash the entire iMovie project folder.
Note that iMovie 4 lets you make an iDVD project without exporting the iMovie project to a new movie.
Karl

IMovie file structure help

Hi there.
First of all, I cannot confirm whether this is for IMovie '11 or not but I had to choose a version to post.
So I usually work in FCP and a client sends me some footage they had shot. I thought I was getting QT files but what I received was a folder that contained two other folders entitled "IMovie Cache" and "IMovie Thumbnails".
Inside the Cache folder is a QT movie called cache and a file called Cache.plist
Inside the Thumbnails folder are a bunch of files starting with the word "clip" and another IMovie Cache folder which contains different Cache and Plist files than the first "IMovie Cache" folder.
Long story short, I cannot open any of these files and do not want to change them because I know IMovie doesn't like stuff to be moved around. When I try to open the cache.mov files in QT is asks to find the "Clip" (are these the thumbnails?) files but when I navigate to the missing files they will not let be select them.
I'm thinking what I am missing is an IMovie Project file. Is there any way to open these files without with or without IMovie?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

This sounds like a a partial iMovie Event folder.
Normally, the Event folder would have the video clips (e.g. DV, Apple Intermediate Codec, h.264, etc.) plus it would have the two folders you mentioned. The thumbnails and cache folders are used in iMovie for skimming and other things, but they reference the real clips.
I would ask your client to provide the rest of the folder. This may be quite large depending on what it is.

Due to storage shortage I had to transfer my imovies files to an internal HD.

After doing this imovie won't show up any of my projects or any movies. All files are still on the computer so it seems to be a connection problem? How do I connect all the files up again?
To move the files I just opened up 2 finders and dragged the imovie folders into the internal memory.

Hi thanks for your quick reply! I have dragged across all of imovies files that I can find. This included the events library and the project library. Or am I mis-understand what you are saying here?
I'm a mac dummy as not had one for long and it's been a big adjustment!

Can iMovie file be split in 2 ?

I have made an iMovie 6 file that is 90 minutes long. I think it has to be less than 60 minutes to send it to iDVD and burn it "High Quality" ? 95% of the imported video clips are analog; only a few clips are high definition. Do I lose resolution by burning an iMovie file that is 90 minutes long ? If so, is there a way to divide into two 45 minute iMovie files ? Thanks.

Hi ndbob - I don't think that the loss of quality would be too noticeable actually, but yes you can easily divide an imovie into two parts. This is from the iMovie Help Menu:
"Importing video from another iMovie HD project
You can copy individual video and audio clips, and even a whole movie or a portion of a movie (including any transitions, titles, and effects), from one iMovie HD project to another.
To copy video between iMovie HD projects:
Open the project from which you want to copy clips or a portion of your movie.
Select the clips and choose Edit > Copy.
Open the iMovie HD project that you want to copy into.
Choose Edit > Paste.
You can also drag clips from one iMovie HD project directly to the Clips pane, clip viewer, or timeline viewer in another iMovie HD project."
Hope that helps.

Importing iMovie files

Hi all,
I could have sworn I had done this previously, but maybe I'm going crazy. I have multiple video files (tv show episodes) that I have edited within individual iMovie files (ie, cut out the commericals). Each episode is one iMovie file. I want to put multiple movies into multiple iDVD files (ie a few episodes per disc to fit an entire season). Do I really have to export all of the files from iMovie into a quicktime file first, or is there some way to use the iMovie file directly in iDVD.
I know I've done this before w/ my wedding videos. Does it make a difference that one was off a mini-DV camera and one was off my tv (mp4 format)? Is there a work-around? I'd hate to have to waste time exporting all these files.
Thanks,
Joslin
MacBook Mac OS X (10.4.10)

I couldn't agree more!
I was following EVERY bit of advice that I could find ANYWHERE -- and STILL nothing would work for me. I consulted the +iMovie HD 6 & iDVD 6 Visual Quickstart Guide+; the +iMovie 6 & iDVD Missing Manual+; did online searches; and finally consulted this forum -- until I FINALLY found this thread.
This advice is a godsend. For the life of me, no matter what I tried I just couldn't get any method except the "share" command to get my movies into iDVD. But this workaround about sharing and then quitting iDVD without saving first works beautifully. I'm stunned that this "integrated package" of iLife app's requires something like this to work properly. I can't tell you how frustrated I was becoming -- and I'm using a brand new eight-core 3.0GHz Intel Mac Pro, no less! With 16GB of RAM!!!
I'm wondering if this problem is a real rarity for iDVD users, since I had to search so long and hard to find the answer. Maybe a combination of 10.4.10 and specific hardware, but in any event I'm just glad to have it solved.

Cannot import iMovie files after system reinstall

Tiger 10.4, iMovie 5.01,
Things were oh so easy for a long time then ,wham, everything went haywire.
Was working on vacation video. trip of a lifetime with two families, you know.
Anyway finished movie,did theiDVD sequence then tried to burn. Had issues with audio encoding. Removed the .com.plist.apple thing and couldn't do anything in iDVD.
I saved all of my libraries and iMovie files to an external disk and reinstalled my OS (tiger 10.4) Now i can not open the movie I made just hours before.
Wha Happened?
HELP!

First of all: Update everything: OS 10.4.2, QT 7.0.1 and iMovie 5.0.2.
Was the external drive PC-formatted or Mac-formatted?

Getting iMovie file to fit on DVD

I have a 1 hr 12 minute iMovie file with video clips, audio, some titles and stills that is 14.47 G total. When I use "create a DVD" I get the "duration is too long"message. I have made sure (following Karl Petersen's advice) to have ONLY the video clips I want in the iMovie file. I exported all clips to Full Quality Quicktime, deleted all clips in the iMovie file, re-imported the .dv files to get my final movie file. I also set the iDVD prefs to Best Quality, not Best performance.
From searching this forum, I read that a movie that is 1 hr 55 minutes should fit on a 4.7 G DVD. The capacity status pane in iDVD shows 4.8 G.
My question (which is obvious already, I'm sure) is what is happening? The file is only 1 hr 12 min long, including everything. My original file after converting from analog to digital was 14.96 G, so it went down a little, to 14.47 G. Seems crazy to split this into 2 DVDs.
When a video is converted from analog to digital, what settings should it have in regards to bit rate, etc? I'm new to this (like lots of people I use an old Formac unit to convert the video VHS tape to digital using NTSC, about 30 frames per second, high performance (but not best), and no compression. Not sure if any of this is helpful or not to my situation.
If there is a comprehensive answer already out there, I'd love to know. thanks for the help!

A few hours sleep and things are starting to look up! Thanks everyone for the help and suggestions!
I did check the QT show movie info (thanks Hui!) and it shows the file as being 21.88GB. Yikes! The resolution is 720 x 480, 48kHz, 16 bit, NTSC. When I look at the movie in QT it shows it as being over 2 hours long, with the second hours' worth just being white screen. When I look at the exact same, unadulterated file in iMovie it only shows the 1 hr movie. When the playhead reaches the 1 hour 17 min mark, it skips back to the beginning of the movie. Therefore, I was not able to "see" and thus remove anything in iMovie that corresponds to the white screen time I found when playing the file in QT.
Now, I have no idea why there is and extra hour in QT, or why QT info shows the "true" data size of the file and it doesn't show up anywhere else, but my solution (trying it anyway to see if it works) is to convert the movie again (done), check the data size in QT (turns out to be 14 GB, yeah!) and import it back to a new iMovie file (next thing to do). Hope this works!
QUESTIONS: What resolution do people usually use when converting video to DV? Does the resolution of the original VHS recording impact the resolution when it is converted to DV?
Also, Joel, I would like more info on the AVI Divx for storing raw footage files. I am crammed tight for space and need room to maneuver on my hard drives. Could you point me to a web site with info?
Thanks everyone!! I can breathe again!

Can't move my iMovie file to external drive

I just finished creating an iMovie file. When I try to move it to an external drive, I get an "unexpected error file (Error code 0).
When I try to "save as" to my external, I get the message: "A Project File is Missing. The file "Clip 05.dv could not be opened and is being skipped." I rebooted, tried again and got the same result. This has never happened to me before - and I need to move it to another machine that has double layer DVD capabilities. Any suggestions?

Possible work-arounds:
1. Share (export) the iMovie back to your camcorder and either use that DV tape to import it into another computer, or re-import it into a new iMovie. You can open the new iMovie on your external drive by selecting that when the opening box appears.
2. Share the iMovie as QuickTime Full quality and then put that quicktime movie into a new iMovie on the external drive. This one requires that you have sufficient drive space to create the quicktime movie.
Either method, you need to be finished with your editing because the edits will be incorporated into the movie. The quicktime movie will be one long clip.
And, as recommended, be sure the external is formatted correctly.

IMovie file size too large for one DVD

I've created my iMovie file and am ready to burn a DVD using iDVD to view on TV. Although my iMovie is only about 35 minutes, it is 7.73 GB. It is a simple movie. I only have a few titles, cross dissolves between clips and some audio.
How do I reduce my iMovie to fit on one DVD?
I don't have the option to "Export" under the "File" menu. And I've tried several of the "Share" formats which reduce the size, but none of them have given me TV viewing quality.
I am using iMovie HD 5 and the movie is widescreen.
Thanks!

iDVD encodes (compresses) the video before burning
the DVD, so there's no problem. Your iMovie project
will fit.
The iDVD capacity is best expressed in time instead
of size. iMovie 4/5 can include up to 2 hours of
video. A little less, counting iDVD features.
Karl
Hi Karl
I have an iMovie file that is 3hr and 10min long. I have a dual layer burner and dual layer DVD's to burn onto. Will this file fit onto the 8.5GB disc? or do I have to compress it somehow? If there is some software that will do this could you let me know?
The dual layer DVD's say they will fit 215 min of video on them, so why does it reject my file when starting iDVD?
Thanks for your help

IMovie file is to long

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for