Moving iMovie Projects to an external drive

I cannot move iMovie projects to an external drive. I have followed the instructions. Help!

If it doesn't recognize the drag, then there is something else awry. You should be able to force a move instead of a copy by holding down the cmd key. Can you just plain copy?
If the destination does not become highlighted, the OS doesn't think it can accept the item for some reason.

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How to move an iMovie project to an external drive ?

Hi I need to move my iMovie project to an external drive, to free some space, please help. if it's possible.....

To make sure that all required media is in the library contain the project you need to "Consolidate media" see: http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov882dee351
You can then copy the library to your laptop with the Finder and open it with the same version of iMovie. The last phrase is important since Apple has made changes in the project format several times even between minor updates of iMovie 10. Earlier versions may not be able to read the library and later versions (not possible in this case) may cause the project to be updated so that it is no longer readable by the desktop version. iMovie on the laptop will not at first find the copied library - you will have either to double click on it or File - Open library - Other and navigate to its location.
Geoff.

If I back up iMovie projects to an external drive does it take the media with it? I want to free up space and remove pictures that were in iPhoto...that were used as media by iMovie when project was under way. In short I want archive iMovie stuff

If I back up iMovie projects to an external drive does imovie take the media with it? I want to free up space and remove pictures that were in iPhoto...that were used as media by iMovie when project was under way. In short I want archive iMovie stuff. If I pull pics out of iPhoto, and later want to drag an archived projet bac into iMovie and the pics are no longer in iPhoto, will I be able to keep working in the project in iMovie?

Very likely not, as the iPhoto's can be used for something else.
More like it took a copy, or it's referencing that spot on the drive in the editable files and most likely made a copy to create a new permanent export file.
Sample one picture and a iMovie file and see what happens.

How do I Retrieve imovie projects from and external drive back into my mac internal drive

How do I Retrieve imovie projects from and external drive back into my mac internal drive?
Thank You

Every working drive, Internal or External, should produce an Icon on your Desktop. If you cannot see those, click on the Desktop (to get Finder) and choose Preferences off the Finder Menu. The general pane has checkboxes for "Show these items on the Desktop:"
Double click the Icon for your External Drive to open it. Open the folders on it until you find the Items you want to copy. Drag them to the Icon of your Internal Drive, or open the folder where you want them to land and drop them in there.
A drive that does not appear on the desktop after you have asked it to may be damaged. But it would be smart to do a Restart to see if it is recognized again at next Startup.

How do I import an imovie project from an external drive to imovie?

My hard drive on Macbook Pro 2009 recently crashed. Luckily I backed up my imovie projects on an external. I upgraded with new hard drive and installed snow leopard. I transferred this particular imovie project from external to the 'movies' folder on the internal drive. When I launch imovie to find this particular imovie project all I see are various folders associated with this particular project not the imovie project icon (the icon where I double click and begin editing). If I try to import directly from external drive the project icons are grayed out.
Furthermore if I try to import any video (whether from external or internal drive) on imovie it says:
This file could not be moved:
(Insufficient access privileges for operation )
All movie files play on quicktime when I test them, so I'm unsure as to why I don't have access privileges.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Any replies to this one? Anyone????

How can I move an iMovie Project to an external drive in latest version (10.0.7)

I am trying to transfer an iMovie project from my desktop to my laptop to work on it anywhere. I have seen ways to do this in earlier releases but they do not work for the current version (10.0.7.)
I have a Mac OS Extended (journaled) USB drive. Previous threads have said that the external drive will show up in the "Events Library." This version of iMovie does not have an "Events Library" and the button to make it visible in previous versions is gone. I have looked at the Apple Support link iMovie '11: Copy or move a project to an external hard disk, but this won't work on the latest version release.
I can't seem to find any way to move my project to the external drive.
Any thoughts? Thanks

To make sure that all required media is in the library contain the project you need to "Consolidate media" see: http://help.apple.com/imovie/mac/10.0/#mov882dee351
You can then copy the library to your laptop with the Finder and open it with the same version of iMovie. The last phrase is important since Apple has made changes in the project format several times even between minor updates of iMovie 10. Earlier versions may not be able to read the library and later versions (not possible in this case) may cause the project to be updated so that it is no longer readable by the desktop version. iMovie on the laptop will not at first find the copied library - you will have either to double click on it or File - Open library - Other and navigate to its location.
Geoff.

Can I archive my iMovie project to an external drive? how?

I have been searching this forum for an answer but so far have only found how to save my iMovie project to DVD. The problem is, my movie is too big to fit on one DVD. Trash is empty; still no go. I do have a LaCie external firewire drive - can I just do a Save Project As... to the LaCie, or do I have to do something else? I'm just looking to save my movie project so I can get it off of my Mac and free up some hard drive space again.
Many thanks in advance!

Hi Gretchen, regarding the large size of your project, keep in mind that in iMovie HD, an original imported clip is retained in its entirety even if only a small segment is used in your final movie - called non-destructive editing. Only those imported clips not used AT ALL can actually be trashed. This makes for very large projects and potential storage issues, but has the advantage of being able to recover and re-work clips, even after Saving.

How do I move a project from an external drive back into Imovie

I recently bought an Iomega external hard drive to store documentary movies so that I wouldn't jam up my Imac's free space. However, after I moved an imovie/idvd project to it, and wanted to make changes, I could not move the project back into the Imac's drive. (It also would not burn from the external, giving me a multiplex error) When I tried to move the movie back into Imovie on the Imac it said Quicktime couldn't parse it. I saw various posts about parsing, but not about specifically about moving a project from an external drive. Can anyone offer any suggestions? It seems to me that I should be able to move a project back and forth without that much trouble.

Sounds like you have a DVD format (MPEG-2) and not an iMovie Project file.
The key phrases are "multiplex" and "parse". Both suggest MPEG-2 format when opened in QuickTime. It would also throw an error -2048 message if MPEG-2.
But another issue could be the file format of the external drive. Most ship pre-formatted for the Windows OS's but a Mac user should format using HFS+ (and others). If you didn't format the drive before moving the large iMovie Project onto it it may have become severely fragmented if the external used FAT 16 or FAT 32 (very common) formats. They have a 2 or 4 GB file size limit, respectively and would have made your Project unreadable when moved back and forth.
Use the Disk Utility app to find out the format of your external drive.

Archiving iMovie 7.1 on external drives

I am digitizing old family movies via iMovie (7.1) that is housed on my MacBook Pro laptop (10.4.11). To save hard drive space I would like to archive these and others movies on a 500 GB external drive, and THEN erase them from my laptop drive. I want to make sure I am doing things right before I get too far into the project.
Can I just move the iMovie Projects to the external drive, or do I also need to move the iMovie Projects AND Events over. Do I need to install the iMovie software package in the external drive as well?
If there is an easier ot more efficient way of doing this kind of work, I'd welcome all suggestions
Thanks,
EW

The external drive MUST be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and MUST be connected by firewire.
Keep the application on your startup drive, but the projects can reside on the external drive, subject to the above.
Make doubly sure everything works before deleting the originals!

Moving imovie projects to external hard drive

To save space on my hard drive, I moved all my imovie projects to an external hard drive and then deleted them on my laptop. When I tried to import them again, imovie did not recognize them - they were grayed out and not importable. What did I do wrong? Is it possible that I needed to move all the event clips together with the projects?
I need to figure out how to remove movie material to keep memory open, but am not clear how to do it. . . What do the experts do about this?

Let's assume you have raw MP4 clips in an event.
You start a project and select portions of the clips to be in the project. You add titles, music, etc.
Then you Share/Using QuickTime in MP4 format. At this point, the movie is rendered by using the Project file as a roadmap to go our and get the right clips from the Event files, add the titles, add the music etc. and produce a single MP4 movie that you can play.
You may get better results if you use a variant of MP4 called h.264.
You can also adjust the color of the movie using the video adjustments. Also, if your raw material is MP4, you should realize that this is a highly compressed format. You may get better results if you use a free app like MPEG Streamclip to convert the MP4 file into Apple Intermediate Codec, then import this into iMovie. Then you create your movie as always. Then you can share it as an MP$ (h.264).
The MP4 codec has one full frame for every 24 or so frames. The rest of the frames contain information about what has changed from the prior frame, so iMovie must resolve and compute what all the frames are as it is adding the titles, adding music etc at render time - then reconverting to mp4.
If you convert it to Apple Intermediate Codec, every frame is converted to a full frame.
If your source material is low resolution, editing in MP4 is fine. But is your source material is high definition, you will definitely get better results by converting to full frames before editing.
That probably isn't very clear, but come back with additional questions if you like.

G'day. I am using iMovie 11 and need to clear disk space. How can I do that using an external drive, leaving me the option to go back and make changes or access old events or projects from that external drive?

G'day. I am using iMovie 11 and need to clear disk space. How can I do that using an external drive, leaving me the option to go back and make changes or access old events or projects from that external drive?

The slightly bigger question is whether you want to move all movie content to the external drive (essentially meaning that drive will always need to be attached when you're working with your videos), or whether you just want to archive older videos off to the external drive.
If you want to move all videos, then just move the 'Movies' folder in your home directory to the external drive, then create an alias of the external 'Movies' back in to your home directory. Now the 'Movies' icon in your home directory will point to the external drive and everything will just work (as long as the external drive is attached when you launch iMovie)
If you want to archive older movies then each Movie should have its own subdirectory within your Movies folder. These can easily be moved off to the external drive, and moved back should you ever need to work on those movies again.

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.

Can I open an imovie project from an external hard drive on a different computer than my own? If so how?

Can I open an imovie project from an external hard drive on a different computer other than my own? If so how?

If you used the Finder to move the files, iMovie will have lost track of them. iMovie holds the locations of the Event files, and Project files contain references to those locations. If you move the files, iMovie has no way of knowing where they are.
If you can, first move all the files back to their original locations. Plug in the external drive. Open iMovie and move the files in iMovie's interface (help explains how, but basically, just drag and drop in the event pane).
Then you can connect the drive to the new computer, and iMovie will see them.

Moving iPhoto, Photo Booth, & iMovie library to an external drive

I've search through most of the support community and still havent found a concrete answer. Like most my current internal harddrive is about full. Mostly filled with photos and movies. I have a external harddrive that Time Machine is enabled. I also backed u my iphoto & photo booth library to the external drive. I have yet to move over any imovie data until I am sure that process will work.
How do I move all data over so that iphoto, photo booth, & imovie can be ran fom my external harddrive. Also how can I ensure that imovie will direct itself to the iphoto library on my external because all movies from the past use the iphoto library as its directory. Once this is done I would like to delete all previous data off of my nternal drive
Thank you

. I have a external harddrive that Time Machine is enabled. I also backed u my iphoto & photo booth library to the external drive. I have yet to move over any imovie data until I am sure that process will work.
Do you want to store your movies and photos on your Time Machine drive? That is not recommended, since you will not have a backup, if the media are only on your backup volume. You will need a second drive in addition to your backup drive, and this drive needs to be formatted MacOS Extended (Journaled), otherwise you cannot store photo libraries (iPhoto, Aperture) or iMovie events on that drive, see: Format external drives to Mac OS Extended before using with Aperture (remember, thta formatting erases a drive, you have to save any contents to another drive before formatting).
For iPhoto: Once your external drive has the correct file system, simply select your iPhoto library in the Finder and drag it to that drive. Then double click the copied library to open it in iPhoto.
For iMovie: To move your iMovie events to an external drive, use the event browser in iMovie - don't use the Finder!
See this Help page: Copy or move video from your Event Library to an external ... http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2302
I don't use Photo Booth, so I do not know how to move your Photo Booth photos.
Regards
Léonie

How to move an uncompleted iMovie project from one hard drive to another?

I want to move an uncompleted iMovie project form one hard drive to another. What do I move to make sure that all of parts of the project: movies, photos, sound, are moved?
Thanks, Bruce

Hi,
You can deploy the ADF Project as an ADF Library Jar file and reuse the taskflow from that jar file in another BPM Application.

Moving iMovie Projects to an external drive

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