Opening imovie project from external hard drive

I get this message: The project “last duly noted” was saved with an older version of iMovie. Opening it in this version will cause it to be upgraded, which will make it unreadable by older versions. Are you sure you want to open it?
How can I edit this item?

Hi Harmless - I do not think that your problem has anything to do with the external drive. Your project must have been crreated on an earlier version of iMovie - iMovie 4 perhaps, and contained in a standard folder. It can be upgraded to an HD project - best to use a copy for this, just in case....!
When you upgrade, it will firstly be converted only partially into the new version, so you have to take another step to fully convert>
Here's a comment about what should happen:
"A project created by iMovie 5 is a special kind of folder called a package. It looks and acts like a file. The package contains all the files and folders you see, but they are all hidden inside the package. To open the project in iMovie you double-click on the package.
If your project looks like an iMovie 4 folder instead of a package — so you can easily see inside — my guess is it's probably a project you've converted from iMovie 4 to iMovie 5. Converted projects do not look or act like true iMovie 5 projects. They contain the same files/folders but are stored in a conventional folder, just like iMovie 4.
That's not necessarily a good thing, for a user can get inside too easily, and open the project by double-clicking on that tilde file. If you do that, iMovie opens the PREVIOUSLY-saved version of the project. And when you next save, iMovie creates a second tilde file. Then a third, then a fourth. It's all too easy for the user to get confused, open the wrong project file and create quite a mess.
So it's a good idea, after converting a project from iMovie 4 to iMovie 5, to do a Save As to save the project into a new project. Then iMovie 5 builds a true iMovie 5 project that looks and acts like a real iMovie 5 project. Lots safer, and it works better." (as described by Karl Petersen)
So, you should experience no problems if you follow that advice - go ahead and convert!

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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.

How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro?

How can I move my project from external hard drive to my macbook pro? every time I try to do some editing, the sequence is very slow, thanks in advance

Try here...
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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.

Projects from external hard drive not opening on desktop. Please help.

I use my external hard drive to create, edit and save all my imovie projects. In this external drive I have all my raw clips, events, projects etc.
My home computer is my primary place of work, and I am now trying to open a half edited project from my external hard drive on my daughter's mac. Note this project was saved in imovie 8 and she has imovie 9, although I cannot see this being an issue.
Can anyone else suggest why imovie only opens my events, but doesn't open the project in the project library. I have tried copying the .rcproject from the external hard drive to the desktop along with the events, but to no avail. Any further suggestions, I have a pending deadline.
Thanks.

You should be able to get this to work.
I would suggest the following:
1) Move the RCPROJECT file from the desktop to the Movies/iMovie Projects folder.
2) Use the Events on the external drive. Your project will be pointing to the external drive. It will not know how to find anything on the internal drive.
Then restart iMovie.
This should work, as iMovie is forward compatible. However, once you open the project in iMovie 09, you will no longer be able to open it in iMovie 08. (Of course, you could make a copy of it in its current state.)
I am less sure about your events. Your events will be converted to iMovie 09 format. I don't think you will be able to still open them in iMovie 08. You might if you delete all the cache and thumbnail folders and let iMovie 08 regenerate these, but I am not sure. Your best bet is to upgrade to iMovie 09 or better yet, iMovie 11 on your home computer.

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.

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 you

thanks 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

Editing Old Project from External Hard Drive

Last year my G5 developed an incurable Kernel error issue. I decided to buy a new iMac and have been very pleased. I backed up my system to an external hard drive and now I would like to access an old project from the external drive.
I selected the external drive and went to the last date of my backup. However, this is where I have no idea how to complete this task. Can I simply open FCE and import the project from the drive? Will all of the media transfer over?
Would really like to know the ins and outs before I begin and paint myself into a corner. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!

Tom:
Not sure what you mean by "restore". I am assuming I will need to do the following:
1. Open FCE
2. Import the old project from my external drive
3. This is where I get lost. Can you please fill in the blanks from her for me. I cannot seem to find the instructions to do this anywhere.
Thanks!

Can't open iphoto library from external hard drive

I'm backing up my enormous iPhoto library to two external hard drives in order to free up space on my computer. Before deleting the photos permanently from the laptop, I wanted to double-check that the copies of the library I made on the two externals would actually work on another computer, should something happen to my laptop. When I plug my external hard drive into my laptop and use option+click on iPhoto to choose which library I want to use, it opens up the library from the external just fine, no problems. However, when I plug the same external into a different Mac computer and do the same process, I get the immensely frustrating message of "You can't open photo library blah blah blah changes have been made using newer version of iPhoto". However, both my laptop and the second computer are running the exact same version of iPhoto (the most recent), so that can't (or at least shouldn't) be the problem. I found suggestions to rebuild the library, which I did, but the same result occurs. I double-checked to be sure that neither computer needed updates (they didn't).
When I plug one of the externals into the second computer, though, I can open up the package contents of iPhoto library and all the photos are visible, so I know the information is all there. But I don't want to lose my albums, etc.
So do I just delete the copies of my library from the externals and try it all over again? I'd prefer not to, since I have 40,000+ photos, and that takes a while.

To reinforce what Larry pointed out both Macs must be running the same version of iPhoto. And the external HD must be formatted as shown in this screenshot:
and don't forget the ignore ownership.
OT

Cannot open image direct from external hard drive in Elements 9

I have recently upgraded from Elements 8 to 9 and when I search for an image in my external hard drive (where all my photos are stored!) I used to be able to double click on it and it opened in E8. When I try this in E9 I get a message: 'Photo image on hard drive 2671Jpg is not a valid win 32 application' and I cannot access my photo. Even if I right-click to 'Open with Elements 9', I get the same message.
How do i fix this?

Hi
Thanks for your suggestion.
However , right clicking opens PSE 9 (not editor) and this does not work.
Get the same message each time.

IMovie projects on external hard drive not visible

Thanks for the help. I recently received a free upgrade to iMovie 10 (I think that's what it's called) and now I can no longer view any of my existing projects or events that I had saved on an external hard drive that's connected via Thunderbolt. Is there anything that you can advise me to do before I condemn the new iMovie any more than I already have!??? Thanks again!
Chris

I wish I could help. I found the same thing when I "upgraded" to the new version. When I launched iMovie 10, I allowed it to update my movie library and in the process it seems to have copied everything to my Mac's hard drive. I had all my events stored on an external drive and I don't want those files on my internal drive.
Here's the best part: In case you have't figured it out yet, iMovie 10 will reset ALL of your iMovie '11 preferences, so when you decide to go back to using the old version (as I have) you'll have to go through every page of prefs and "fix" them.
I may eventually try using the new version, but only after they've replaced most or all of the functionality of iMovie '11. This is almost exactly how things played out when Apple replaced iMovie HD back in 2009. It's like they have no beta testers at all.

Transfer iMovie project to external hard drive

I have a huge video project in my iMovie08 that is too large to even put in the browser. I've tried to transfer it all to an external disk, so I can work on it in pieces from there, but it doesn't seem to transfer or even copy it to the hard drive. The project shows up on the hard drive, but it just opens the one that's on my computer. There's plenty of space on the external drive. How do I go about transferring it properly - I really don't want to lose it as it was very time-consuming to get it on my machine in the first place. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi
Moving Event's and Project's
Connection - Either connect one Mac in Target mode to the other via FireWire. Or use an external hard disk !
(Target-Mode - Start one Mac e.g. laptop - BUT keep T-key down during full up-start - Now a FW-symbol is jumping around the screen and it will work as an external hard disk when connected to the other Mac)
A. The External Hard Disk - MUST BE - Mac OS Extended (hfs) formatted to work for Video. UNIX/DOS/FAT32/Mac OS Exchange works for most other things but not for Video whatever program is used (iMovie or FinalCut)
B. Should be a FireWire one as USB/USB2 performs badly to me and especially when filling up
C. Do never Move or Alter any folder named
• iMovie Event's - or -
• iMovie Project's
on DeskTop/Finder - as this will result in iMovie losing connections to them and repair can be anything from hard to impossibly
D. Moving and Copying must be done within iMovie application and Events to Events - and - Project's to Project's.
E. Moving Project's to Event's - Do not work for me - I have to export project as a QuickTime movie then Import this intoEvents.
Event's window can show two faces
Like this
or like this
from one hard disk Event - You can move it to the other hard disk
You can not (at least not me) move Event to Project or other way around only
Event to Event and Project to Project
Yours Bengt W

Moving projects between external hard drives lose clips

Sorry for the unclear subject line, but I really can't think of a quippy way to say what the problem is.
Short version--I moved project from external hard drive A to external hard drive B. Worked on A. Worked on B. Moved it back to A (still have copy on B). No longer works on A. Clips show up in the timeline, but on screen is white. Transitions, titles, audio don't work. Still works on B.
Ideas?
Long version--I'm using 10.3.9 on my old Powerbook. iMovie 6.0.3. I am using Lacie Porsche 250GB external and a Mercury Elite Pro 500 GB hard drives. When I started, the Lacie, which I was using for my speaking career videos, was NOT formatted for Mac OS Extended (Journaled). So, while working on another project, I had issues with the infamous Ken Burns bug with pictures.
After consulting with the experts here (thanks Karl), I determined that I must reformat. So, pain and anguish, I moved the various movies off of the Lacie (Drive A) to the Mercury (Drive B). On both, the movies worked fine--all transitions, everything. The Mercury was and is Mac OS Extended (but NOT Journaled).
So, I wipe the Lacie with Disk Utility so it is Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Once finished, I begin the process of moving projects (3 in total) back to the Lacie. Two of the projects are completed works with transitions, audio file, titles and the like. One is just clips in the clip pane, none in the timeline. I moved them all at once.
When I did, I checked them before I would delete them off the Mercury. When I did, both of the completed projects loaded properly--the clips do show in the timeline. But, in the preview window, all I have is a blank white screen. When I play, nothing happens.
I have not erased anything, changed anything, thrown anything away--nothing. And, they still work perfectly on the Mercury (same computer, obviously).
This one really has me stumped. I am really irked that iMovie has apparently become such a messed up program. Worse, this has been out for some time now (I had not used it yet, but I got iLife last year some time). I can't believe there are all these issues all this time later and obviously Apple has done nothing or little to correct these problems. I consider iMovie a real flagship program to model the ease of use and blah blah blah that we all know concerning Apple.
OK, sorry for venting---anyone with any ideas? Did I mess up the drive when I wiped it? Is this merely the program? Something between the fact that the Mercury is NOT Journalled? Any help will, as always, be appreciated.

Thanks David---
The Permissions are the same for both, on both hard drives.
I have not repaired permissions on either.
I did shut down the computer last night and this AM, upon starting again, had the same problem.
I did attempt a few fixes--I moved the clips from the timeline back to the preview pane. I had one clip already there and it would play perfectly. When I did that, with a clip from the timeline and then moved it back, it would show up and play. But, upon hitting the next clip, it would stop playing at the first transition.
Some of the transitions are from a Third Party (Gee). Remember, though, they played perfectly fine from Drive B. I have not attempted, however, to put the Gee effects into iMovie 6. As I said earlier, I haven't used the program on my computer since the Fall. Now, using 6.0.3, I don't see my GeeThree effects anywhere, nor have I tried to put them in. But, from the Drive B (and originally in the drive A), the movie plays fine even though the added clips are not present for me to use in any new project.

How can I import a movie into iMovie 09 from a hard drive? The movie will open and play in idvd but breaks into separate files that can't be downloaded when I try to import. Can it be done?

How can I import a movie into iMovie 09 from a hard drive? The movie will open and play in idvd but breaks into separate files that can't be downloaded when I try to import. Can it be done? I am trying to create a disc of player highlights for a collegiate coach, and I am using movie files downloaded to my hard drive from a DVD created on a PC.

No unfortunately it won't open in quicktime either. It does the same thing that Imovie does, separates it into two file folders audio and video, and if i select video it opens to reveal 8 files that cannot be selected. VIDEO_TS.BUP, VIDEO_TS.IFO, VIDEO_TS.VOB,VTS_01_0.BUP, VTS_01_0.IFO, VTS_01_1.VOB, VTS_01_2.VB, VTS_01_3.VOB. All of which cannot be opened or selected.
Opening it in Idvd and folllowing your suggestion works and I get a format code of NTSC. Is that the same? Thank you for your time and response.
CaCanuck

LR won't show images from external hard drive now.

I have LR 5. I updated in March from LR3. I just purchased a second external hard drive to start using for my images after filling up my first. I just tried to go back to external hard drive #1 to look at images from last month, and I can't pull them in to lightroom for some reason. When using external hard drive #1 after updating to lr5, I always had to go to Edit >Open Recent to open a previous catalog to access my images. I think this has something to do with it, because there aren't any other catalog options in LR5 when I switch from external hard drive #2 back to external hard drive #1. I need those images pronto to finish projects!!! Please help and thank you!

This is relevant portion of the support document with a bit of editing for clarity.
If iTunes is running, quit iTunes.
Using a Mac click the icon to open iTunes and immediately press and continue to hold down the Option key.
You should see the following screen:
If iTunes opens normally, close it and try again.
Once you've got that dialog you have two options. If your previous iTunes library database is stored on the external drive use Choose Library to browse to it and open it. If you only have the media folder on the drive then use the Create Library option to create a new iTunes library at /iTunes on the external, move the media folder to /iTunes/iTunes Media and then add it to your new empty library.
tt2

Opening imovie project from external hard drive

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