Low on disk space, and some dim choices by me

Question

Hello
I am running a bit low on disk space so video editing is a bit of a worry for me! I have a DV camcorder and import hours of footage, only to use a minute or two of that to create a "1 song length" mini film.
After I was happy with a few projects I thought I would delete the raw event files and then as the video had been shared with itunes, and I could no longer make any edit, I went a step further and deleted the project in imovie. Now the problems start :o) It was only after doing this that I realised it would be a good idea to share the finished movie with .mac "My Galley" thing, and media browser. But as the option to do this was in the imovie project I'm a bit stuck. Oh how I wish I had used that time machine thing :o)
For one movie that I really wanted to share on .mac I ended up reimporting the movie back into imovie as a new event then creating a new project. Imagine how silly I feel now!
So I know what not to do! But I'm still a little unclear on what is the best approach. I want to build a movie, share with various places, but delete the raw files and use as little disk space as possible after I am happy with the movie.
Any tips?
Regards
Steve

Answer 1

I don't have iMovie '08, so not sure if this still works in that version or not. But as an iMovie '08 user, you can download and install version 6 which will allow the following...
One way to go about it is to import your tapes, giving you hours of footage. Now do a rough edit of the parts you think you may want to still use by putting clips down on the timeline, rough editing out parts you know you don't want, etc. Do not add transitions, titles, etc. at this time. Just clips to the timeline and rough cuts. So now your timeline is say 15-30 minutes of stuff out of the original hours of stuff. Save the project. Close the project.
Start a new project. Open the folder where the old project is. Right click on the project icon and pick "Show Package Contents" which will open the folder structure of the project. In the folders you should have the project reference QT movie of the same name as you project, eg. MyProject.mov which will be a somewhat small file (kilobytes). You can verify this is your old project as you edited down by simply opening it in QT player and reviewing it to make sure it is just the 15-30 minute rough edit you did.
If it is the right file, drag and drop it onto your new project window. iMovie will now import the footage needed. The nice thing about this is it should only import those 15-30 minutes, not the original hours of footage. Once in the new project and you are satisfied you have the footage you wanted. Save the project and you can now trash the old project, empty the system trash and free up all that drive space. The new project will only have the 15-30 minutes of footage and not all the extra footage from the original tapes.
Disclaimer: I am still an old iMovie 4 user, so also not first hand knowledgeable about iMovie 6. You might be able to simply copy clips off the timeline from the old project to the new project, but I am not sure if that brings over just the footage in those clips, or if it makes a full copy of the original media files (this bringing over the entire clips including the parts you cut out). I am sure other iMovie 6 users can jump in here and help refine the process for iM6 shortcuts I don't know about.
Patrick