My iMovie is broken. Or my iMovie project is corrupt.

I have spent probably a hundred hours editing this movie that a friend and I are making and on my last editing session it crapped itself. I can no longer do anymore edits on the movie. I cannot share it, or burn it. It will not play. Half the time iMovie wont even let me into it. I can only see it in the project library. All the text and audio clips is moved around aswell. I have tried everything. I have deleted the iMovie preference file. Reinstalled iMovie. Bought the iMovie '11 update. I even erased my whole hard drive and reinstalled Mac osx as well as all the applications. The project is on an external hardrive. It has been on there the whole time.
It is not just that project, my other projects don't work either, but not to the same degree. One plays full screen, but won't play in the little veiw finder window. If I start another project it works fine but then if I go to my original project (the long broken one) and then go back to the new project, then it doesnt work either. I have tried everything I can find online...nothing has worked. I am desperate not to lose this project. I dont want to start it again, how can I trust iMovie not to do this again?
The only thing left for me to do is to phone Apple support but I thought that I would try writing on here before I fork out the 50 bucks for a phone call that may or may not even fix my problem.
All my software updates are up to date.

I have a clever makeshift 'solution' if you need to get that vital project out...
My project got corrupted and made iMovie crash when I tried to play fullscreen or export the video.
SOLUTION: Make the video viewing pane as large as possible and then use 'ScreenFlow' software to capture it whilst you preview it. You won't recover HD quality, but at least you can get a perfect 480i copy for YouTube.
Here is my real example which I rescued using the above method so you can see for yourself:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXbq38RG8qk

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IMovie Project GLITCHED/Corrupted? Please help!

another problem happened just now. i was editing the titles and i think it was bugged. The whole project now freezes on me and when im at the "select your project" screen the movie looks like it's like static and seems to be glitched and gone. WHen i press on the project it attempts to load but nothing happens on the screen.. grrr i think i have to redo the project now =(
anyone know how to fix this.

When your projects are on your start-up drive they MUST be in the Movies/iMovie Projects folder for iMovie to see them.
However, when you move them to an external drive, the MUST be in the iMovie Projects folder at the top level of the external drive for iMovie to see them.
So I would recommend that you move your iMovie Projects folder to the top level of your external drive. Then restart iMovie.
For best results, you should move iMovie projects and events from within iMovie. You might get away with moving projects in the Finder, but moving Events in the Finder can cause your projects to lose the connection with the event clips.
For more on moving, see this tip. https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4141

IMovie Project contents gone missing – what's broken and where is it all?

I used the latest iMovie (iLife 09) on an dual-core Intel Mac tower to make a 6-minute movie for a client. First time I've ever used iMovie. Worked great and I subsequently used iDVD to burn it for standard DVD player viewing. Now when I open the original iMovie project there is nothing there although it's file size indicates there is clearly content. Nothing appears when I move my cursor around the screen and the project name does not appear at the top. I don't know how an iMovie project tracks its content "links". I'm wondering if I may have moved some files or renamed them and the iMovie project cannot find what it's looking for. Any idea what this newbie has done? Thank you all in advance.

It depends on whether you want to move everything (projects and events) or just the events which are the space consuming items.
Rather than go into a long winded reply here I suggest that you type the following topics into iMovie Help.
It is a great information resource:
1. Copying or moving a project
2. Copying or moving video from your event library
3. Consolidating a project's media.
Your other disc should show up as an icon at the end of your project library and in the event library there is a disc button just to the right of Event Library.
Hope that helps.
Z
PS If you import directly into iMovie then you will have to move your imports to the other drive as per above.
Otherwise if you import video files to your computer then into iMovie, import them into your other drive instead of your primary.
Message was edited by: zyfert

IMovie projects have broken link after I moved file on external hard drive

I have all my iMovie projects on an external hard drive, and it was working fine...until I accidentally broke the links by going into my external hard drive, creating a folder I named "Videos," and dumping the "iMovie Project" folder and the "iMovie Events" folder (which iMovie automatically created for me) into my new folder. I was just trying to consolidate everything into one folder, but that messed everything up. Once I realized what I had done, it would not let me press undo. Then I dragged the iMovie Project folder and the iMovie Events folder back onto the main part where they originally were, and that did not fix it.
Does anyone have any tips on getting my links back? I'd be so appreciative!! I have almost 200 projects of my kids that I can't access now. I have iMovie '11. Thanks so much.

The iMovie projects and iMovie Events folders have to be at the root (top) level of the drive they are on (or at the top level of the User/Movies folder), otherwise iMovie 9 won't see them.
As long as you have not changed the contents of these folders, if you put them back at a root location they should automatically appear in iMovie.
Geoff.

How do I migrate iMovie project data/pointers from iPhoto to Aperture?

This may be a rather tricky question but here is what I want to do. I have 22GB of Photo's/Video's in iPhoto that I originally used at some point in the past to create some travel home movies. I currently have about 44GB of Photo's/Vid in Aperture. I like Aperture so much that I never use iPhoto anymore.
I've started moving just the albums with pictures in iPhoto over to Aperture. (simple enough) But now I have a lot of space I need to free up.
My question is possibly broken down into 2 parts.
1) How do I move albums with photo's & video to Aperture and index them accordingly without affecting the iMovie projects that link to the original iPhoto data?
I want to keep my iMovie projects the way they are, in editable form, thus eliminating the need for iPhoto, so I can clean up 22GB.
2) In iMovie, on the left window pane, it says "iPhoto Library" & "Aperture Library", with all the old iMovie projects pointing to the iPhoto library. Would moving the rest of my iPhoto library into Aperture automatically purge iMovie editable video projects?
I've backed everything up onto an external hdd, so I would sincerely appreciate any help on this topic. It sounds complicated, but I think it should be fairly straightforward. However, I thought I'd ask the community before actually attempting to do so.
Again, appreciate your help folks. Thanks.

Thanks for your suggestions, However I tried to do a simple test on one very short iMovie project and this is what has occurred:
Setup: (iPhoto '11, iMovie '11, Aperture 3.1.1 - All up to date)
to understand what's going on, prior to what I did below this is how my projects are setup, iPhoto has an event & album tagged F1 Montreal Weekend '08 with both photo / video. (my test project for the purposes of trying to get this to work) iMovie has a project I created based on that photo video and it's saved as an iMovie project called 'F1 Montreal' with references to the iPhoto database.
Action:
First, in Aperture, I imported the whole iPhoto event above which brought over all 192 photos and about 36 videos. I then filed it in aperture under my new way of storing albums/videos and created a smart album for video within the Aperture project. Once I verified all the data is there, I then trashed the iPhoto event and album mentioned above to free up some space since it's now in Aperture. Finally, i closed both iPhoto & Aperture and loaded up iMovie.
Results:
The project 'F1 Montreal' shows up as normal, with all its edits and such after clicking edit project. However, there is a little yellow exclamation mark that says this on every slice of video:
"This clips media file is not currently available.
/users/{me}/Pictures/iPhoto Library/Masters/2008/F1 Montreal/{moviehere}.mov"
After some research on what this is and how to fix it, it seems there's no menu option to repoint the movie files to a different location, am I missing something or have I moved / merged these files the wrong way? Apparently there is some help in the iMovie help file that shows how to reconnect data, but I can't find it anywhere.
I would really appreciate any additional help on how to do this. I'm sure someone's tried doing this before, yes?
Thanks!

Moving Aperture libraries while keeping iMovie project video links intact.

I am in the process of moving my Aperture libraries off my internal drive to an external drive. The problem I found is that by do so, my iMovie projects that were using video clips from the Aperture libraries now have broken source links. I have all my video clips managd by Aperture, not referenced.
The way I moved the libraries was simply drap the library files to the new desitination. I can see the original clips in iMovie's event library after the move and thumbnails are generated; but my project links are not updated.
My question is that is there a proper way doing this correctly so my iMovie project links are still intact after the move? Thank you in advance for your helps.

I have exactly the same question as the OP. I've been into digital photography for a while, and have been using Aperture for a short time, but have JUST started to shoot some video for fun. Video goes into my Aperture library, but I'm just using iMovie to mess around with the video. I export short clips to YouTube for the family to view. Eventually, I'll put these projects on DVDs and I know I'll have to delete them from the Aperture library for space reasons.
How are people handling this? Should I just move the video directly to an external hard drive, for example?
Thanks.

Dividing up an iMovie project

I made a iMovie project that is made up of still pics and ken burns setting. Each pic is 6 seconds long and the entire project is 6 hours with music in the back ground. This is too long for iDVD and needs to be broken up. How do I divide the project up without changing the contents?

Navigate to the Project Library view, so you see the names of all your projects on the left, and your Project looks like a filmstrip on the right.
Now, right-click on the Project Name and select Duplicate Project. You may need to do this multiple times.
You may want to rename them so you can tell them apart (e.g. hour 1, hour 2, etc.)
Now you can open up these copies, and delete the portions you do not need, leaving the part the you want to keep intact.

Cannot open imovie projects

Hello,
I've spent the afternoon looking for answers and I've tried everything but still no luck.
I've been working at a project for the past week. This afternoon, imovie crashed when i was editing my project. When I opened imovie, the project was gone from the "project library." I navigated to the imovie project folder, and sure enough, the file was there. Problem is, imovie can't open it. I've clicked, dragged but nothing works.
I've even deleted the "com.apple.imovie8.plist" file but it doesn't help. Finally, i checked the console message and here's what i got:
6/19/10 6:42:20 6/19/10 iMovie[246] Skipping loading of project "South America" due to error: Unable to load project
6/19/10 6:42:20 6/19/10 iMovie[246] CoreText: Bad Glyph Found In 'kern' Subtable Of CTFont <name: Futura-Medium, size: 19.330000, matrix: 0x0>
CTFontDescriptor <attributes: <CFBasicHash 0x9bc870 [0xa0028ee0]>{type = mutable dict, count = 1,
entries =>
1 : <CFString 0xa006cd78 [0xa0028ee0]>{contents = "NSFontNameAttribute"} = <CFString 0xa0025fa8 [0xa0028ee0]>{contents = "Futura-Medium"}
Any ideas on how to fix this?
Thanks!!!!

This means that your original media files were not in your events folder but only links to them, with the originals stored somewhere else. If you look in the events folders inside your iMovie Events folder you will probably see aliases to the clips rather than the clips themselves. If you get info on the alieases they may identify where the original was stored (or they may say the original can't be found).
You must have moved your events folder at some point which broke the links so iMovie now doesn't know where to find them. You can still see the thumbnails in the timeline because these are small low resolution files which are in your project file. Unless you can move your folders back to exactly how they were when you created the project (and on the same computer) you will have to re-import the originals and re-insert them into the timeline.
You could as an alternative try putting one of the clips manually into your events folder in place of the broken alias to it and see if it appears in the timeline when you relaunch iMovie. If this works (I'm not sure if it will) you can do it with the rest and not have to touch the project timeline.
Geoff

Export imovie projects from desktop imovie to laptop imovie

I have made three imovie projects in imovie on my desktop. I would like to edit them further on my laptop. When I try to copy/paste the file from desktop to lap top the movie part of the is not readable in imovie on my laptop.
Am I attempting the impossible?

Transfer of projects between iOS devices and Macs was broken in iMovie 10 (http://www.macworld.com/article/2057972/imovie-for-ios-projects-no-longer-work-o n-the-mac.html). As far as I can determine it has not (yet?) been restored and you can only send completed (shared) videos via iTunes. The article referenced indicates that it was possible to import iMovie iOS projects into iMovie '11 but the Apple article in the link has been withdrawn.
Geoff.

Can i move an unfinished imovie project from one mac to another

so i started a project in imovie on my parents mac and now i want to finish it off on my macbook. is there anyway I can transfer the project????

Yup. however, seeing as how it isn't finalized, well this ought to work.
1-connect up your macbook to your parents' mac (file sharing?)
2-open up iMovie (on your parents' mac)
3-click on "project library" in the upper right hand corner of your iMovie window. You should see your other hard drive there, also. drag your project to this drive. If a message comes up about "project" or "project and events", choose project and events
4-launch iMovie (on your macbook) click on Project Library. and the one your transferred should be there. drag it to the iMovie projects list and it should work
oh, one last thing. Both your parents' mac and your macbook should have the same version of iMovie for this to work, so I've been told
John b

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.

When I upload audio from itunes into my imovie project, it does not show all of the track?

Hi, I have opened a new project in imovie - I have uploaded 200 photos into the project to make a Comic Book movie!
this project is 7 mins and 8 seconds long - the exact length of the audio track that I want to play during the movie!
I have selected the music by clicking the musical note button in imovie, which open up my itunes library and displays the track I want to use that is 7 mins and 8 seconds long.
When I click and drag my MP3 audio from itunes into my imovie project, i only plays the first 5 mins & 33 seconds; leaving my project in silence for the final 1 min & 3 seconds????
I have not added markers, there are no fade ins or fade outs - only the first 5 min & 33 seconds or a 7 min & 8 seconds MP3 Audio track???
I have spent 10 hours trying to rectify this problem.......
can anyone help me with this problem
Peace, Love & Happiness
Jayondrums

Sounds like your talking about iMovie for Mac?
This is the iOS version, repost here:
iMovie

Importing clips from iMovie project (they keep ending up in the trash)

I have never tried to import other clips from another iMovie project before and I just tried it yesterday. This is what I did:
-I went into the other project and clicked on each individual clip from that project that I wanted (one at a time).
-I copied that clip and then saved it to the desktop
-From there I copied those clips to my external drive (which holds the new project that I am working on
-I then opened up the new project in iMovie
-I went to File<Import
-I selected the clips that I had copied over to the external drive
-I imported them
-They all showed up fine, they played fine and I was able to edit them and put them into the time line as well
The problem I face though is after I save the project and exit, the next time I open the project, each of those clips are missing and have been placed in the trash
What am I doing wrong?
Thanks ahead of time for your help!

It sounds like something may be preventing iMovie from properly saving the project on the external drive. The drive format may be wrong, or third-party software might be causing conflicts. More here:
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1852869#1852869
Another possibility is that you are opening the wrong project file saved inside the iMovie 5 project. If your project was originally an iMovie 4 project converted to iMovie 5 that's an easy mistake to make. More here:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=1971832
Note that the copy/export/import routine you used can be simplified enormously. iMovie 5 lets us Copy and Paste clips much more simply. To copy clips from Project A to Project B, open Project A, select all the clips you want copied to Project B, choose Edit > Copy, open Project B, move the playhead where you want to place the clips, and Paste. iMovie will import all the files that support those clips from Project A to Project B. Note that it imports the entire file for the clip, not just the clip itself. That's so the clip inherits all the non-destructive editing features it had in Project A.
To avoid Project B becoming unnecessarily large, it's important to Copy and Paste all the clips you want together. If you copy two clips at the same time that share the same file iMovie imports their source file just one time. But if you Copy and Paste two clips that share the same source file separately, iMovie imports the same file twice.
Karl

Imovie won't open my imovie project

Hello,
I was working on an imovie project when imovie kept crashing. So i backed up deleted imovie and reinstalled. Now it won't open up my .rcproject file. Nothing happens. is all my work lost? Also, when it was crashing some of my viedo clips were grayed out. Now in my event library some of the clips are grayed out. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

Update - I've managed to restore the file from my backup but now imovie crashes everytime i try to play it, just like before.
Thanks

Unable to open iMovie project?

I made a simple iMovie 09 project and burned it to a DVD via iDVD.
Then, to save space on my HD, I moved the project to an external HD.
Now I want to go back to the project to make some edits.   But when took it out of the external HD and placed it on my desktop, I am unable to open it in iMovie.   I've tried simply clicking on the project icon as well as doing File>Import>Movie. I also tried clicking and dragging the movie icon from the desktop to iMovie with no luck. iMovie just doesn't see to want to recognize it.
Can someone help?   Thanks?

Hi
There are so many things to this.
A. Flash drive - I even don't know if they would ever work - very doubtful
B. External hard disks - MUST be Mac OS Extended (hfs) formatted -
UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange works for most other things BUT NOT FOR VIDEO no matter if iMovie, iDVD or FinalCut is used.
C. In the folder iMovie Projects - There are NO MOVIES - but text-documents related to the projects and this document points to the Raw material in iMovie Events folder and how it is supposed to be Played/Viewed in this particular project. e.g. play Clip A from 00:00:01:13 to 00:03:45:02 and so on. So there are no movies in the project folder.
D. So if both iMovie Events and iMovie Projects folder are copied over to an external hard disk - Then the iMovie in the second Mac has no links to this and will not find it.
SO to be able to work with one project on two Macs - all moving's of Events and Projects should be done within the iMovie Application - Not on DeskTop/Finder - do not alter or move any folder named
• iMovie Events
• iMovie Projects
on DeskTop/Finder - as they can mess-up and be very hard to impossible to mend.
Yours Bengt W

My iMovie is broken. Or my iMovie project is corrupt.

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